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Plankton Blooms Swirl in the Baltic

July 24, 2014
Image of the Baltic Sea

While the USGS/NASA Landsat satellite mission has taken amazing images over the last 44 years, the satellite, with its high resolution but narrow swaths of detection covers Earth only every 16 days. Suomi NPP, on the other hand, covers Earth every day, also taking some pretty detailed images of the planet. This image, taken on July 24, 2014, shows swirls of plankton blooms in the Baltic Sea, reminiscent of the Landsat “Starry Night” image. This RGB color composite uses the satellite’s SVI1, SVM4, and SVI2 bands, each sensitive to different colors of light. By combining these channels, features not apparent in normal visible imagery can be discerned.