January 10, 2021 - The Caribbean

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   The Caribbean
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   “The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the
   world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans,
   defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north
   and east”. So starts James Michener’s insightful book, “Caribbean”,
   which describes the allure and roughly 700 years of history of the
   glittering string of islands that rise from the blue waters of the
   Caribbean Sea. Michener’s skills captured much of the essence and
   historical highlights of the Caribbean, but the diversity and
   many-thousand-year history of the more than 700 islands, islets, and
   cays strewn across about 1.063 million square miles of blue water are
   impossible to completely capture, even in a 672-page tome.

   On January 5, 2021, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
   (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of
   a slice of the Caribbean. This image captures the large islands of
   Hispaniola (east), Cuba (west) and Jamaica (south), all part of the
   Greater Antilles. Puerto Rico is also part of the Greater Antilles but
   is located east of Hispaniola and not in this image.

   The Lucayan Archipelago sits north of the Greater Antilles and is often
   considered to be part of the Caribbean, despite not bordering the
   Caribbean Sea. The bright blue to the north of Hispaniola marks the
   coral reef and shallow water of the Turks and Caicos Islands. The
   colorful waters and green islands to the northwest are The Bahamas.

   Image Facts
   Satellite:  Terra
   Date Acquired: 1/5/2020
   Resolutions:  1km (270.5 KB),  500m (862.3 KB),  250m (2.3 MB)
   Bands Used: 1,4,3
   Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2021-01-10
 
