Landsat 9 Sees Buccaneer Archipelago

Swirls of turquoise, deep blue, and sandy brown fill this satellite image of the Buccaneer Archipelago off the coast of Western Australia, captured by the Landsat 9 satellite. The tan plumes near the coast are sediment stirred up by some of the largest tides in the world, which can rise and fall more than 10 meters here. As that muddy water mixes with the clear ocean, it creates the marbled patterns you see spreading across the scene, almost like paint poured into water.

The scattered clumps of green and brown on the right are the islands themselves, hundreds of them, made of ancient sandstone that has been shaped by wind and water over roughly 1.8 billion years. This region holds deep meaning for the Dambeemangaddee people, who have lived along this coast for thousands of years and know it by the name Yowjab. Images like this one come from a long-running partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, which has been photographing Earth from space since 1972 to track how our planet changes over time.

The result is part science, part accident of beauty. Nobody arranged these colors on purpose, yet the tides and sediment produced something that looks a lot like an abstract painting.