Satellite views Earth's living plumage.From their sunlit sun·lit adj. Illuminated by the sun. Adj. 1. sunlit - lighted by sunlight; "the sunlit slopes of the canyon"; "violet valleys and the sunstruck ridges"- Wallace Stegner sunstruck shallows to their pitch-black depths, the oceans provide an estimated 99 percent of Earth's living space, yet biologists have lacked a means of monitoring broad patterns of life in the seas. Now, a long-awaited color-sensing satellite fills that gap, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. , which started releasing data from the instrument last month. "We're going to see Earth the way we've never seen it before," says Gene C. Feldman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center. GSFC employs approximately 10,000 civil servants and contractors, and is located approximately 6.5 miles northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Md. The new satellite monitor, named the Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS), collects daily images of every point on Earth in eight separate wavelengths of light. By determining the color of the oceans, the instrument can indirectly measure the concentration of tiny marine plants called phytoplankton phytoplankton Flora of freely floating, often minute organisms that drift with water currents. Like land vegetation, phytoplankton uses carbon dioxide, releases oxygen, and converts minerals to a form animals can use. , which anchor the marine food chain. SeaWiFS replaces a color-scanning satellite sensor that stopped working in 1986. Unlike the older version, however, SeaWiFS can measure the amount of plant life on land as well as in the oceans. Marine biologists marine biologist specialist in the biology of marine life. say the data from these satellites are invaluable for detecting the large-scale distribution of ocean life, which is impossible to see from the limited vantage point on board a ship. "You get a picture of what the world is really like, and the world is not exactly the way you thought it was," says Richard T. Barber of Duke University's Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, N.C. |
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