“Whenever I gaze up at the moon, I feel like I’m on a time machine. I am back to that precious pinpoint of time, standing on the foreboding — yet beautiful — Sea of Tranquility. I could see our shining blue planet Earth poised in the darkness of space.” –Buzz Aldrin
If you look at Earth from space, you’ll find that we’re a blue planet. You might chalk that up to the fact that our sky is blue, the sky is the outermost layer of our planet, and hence the planet appears blue. But then why do the continents and clouds appear to be such different colors, and why is the “blue” of the ocean such a different shade from the sky we see?
Image credit: NASA’s Earth Observatory / MODIS.
It’s because the “blue” we see from space — or the blue we see from looking at the ocean — actually has nothing to do with the contents of our atmosphere!
Image credit: HD Wallpapers, via http://ift.tt/1MHC52P.
If you ever thought the ocean was blue because it reflects the sky, you’ve got to read this.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1LMG6x7
“Whenever I gaze up at the moon, I feel like I’m on a time machine. I am back to that precious pinpoint of time, standing on the foreboding — yet beautiful — Sea of Tranquility. I could see our shining blue planet Earth poised in the darkness of space.” –Buzz Aldrin
If you look at Earth from space, you’ll find that we’re a blue planet. You might chalk that up to the fact that our sky is blue, the sky is the outermost layer of our planet, and hence the planet appears blue. But then why do the continents and clouds appear to be such different colors, and why is the “blue” of the ocean such a different shade from the sky we see?
Image credit: NASA’s Earth Observatory / MODIS.
It’s because the “blue” we see from space — or the blue we see from looking at the ocean — actually has nothing to do with the contents of our atmosphere!
Image credit: HD Wallpapers, via http://ift.tt/1MHC52P.
If you ever thought the ocean was blue because it reflects the sky, you’ve got to read this.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1LMG6x7
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