A stirring thought

So, after that last post, I thought I should give something a little lighter.

I can't remember where exactly I found this image (somewhere on the NASA site, I think), but it is absolutely phenomenal.
There are a lot of neat things to point out:

First off, what are all those colours in the ocean?
That's an estimate of how much chlorophyll (and kind of how much phytoplankton) are present. Based on the colour of the ocean viewed from space, some smart people have come up with ways to estimate the ocean's chlorophyll content.

See that yellowish oval south of the Bay of Fundy and east of Cape Cod?
That's Georges Bank. Due to some very neat physics that I won't get into, the waters there get well mixed and trapped over the bank. This results in a productive hot spot seen in this image.

See those grey swirls just off the Labrador coast?
I'm not positive on that one but I think that's ice! Ice being stirred and sheared. If you zoom in, it looks amazingly similar to those colours in the ocean. (I remember once I got an exam question that said nothing more than "Ice is a metamorphic rock. Explain." I wish I had this picture.)

See that donut-looking lake in the middle of Quebec?
If I remember correctly, that's from a meteor impact. The middle rebounded but edges were depressed enough to make that lake.

See the clouds making a ring just east of Newfoundland?
That's a low pressure system. You can tell because the "spinning" is in a counter-clockwise direction which, in the northern hemisphere, means a low pressure system.

Okay, I could keep going here, and maybe I will later on, but that's it for now. I just think this image is very cool.