An astronaut captured the breathtaking scene from the International Space Station.
An astronaut on the International Space Station recently snapped a stunning photograph of a"sunglint" that transformed the sea’s surface into a swirling, silver mirror surrounding a pair of Greek islands. The color-changing phenomenon, caused by the sun's light reflecting off the still sea directly into the astronaut's camera, highlights interesting oceanographic effects on and below the water’s surface.
The wavy lines and swirls in the image, which cut across the sea's silver surface like scratches on a mirror, are caused by wind-driven surface currents and deeper sea currents below the surface, as well as rarer phenomena, such as internal waves moving below the water’s surface, and gyres — large systems of rotating ocean currents.
Gravity waves pass across the interface, or meeting points, of two fluid mediums after gravity disrupts the equilibrium between the two, which in this case is caused by Earth's tides. The seas are stratified, meaning they are made up of layers of water with different densities due to variations in temperature and salinity. Gravity waves can, therefore, form where these layers meet, creating internal waves within the ocean, according to The Conversation .
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