Andros Island from space - Earth.comAndros Island from space

Andros Island from space. Today’s Image of the Day from the European Space Agency (ESA) features a Copernicus-2 satellite view of Andros Island, the largest island of the Bahamas.

The false-color image includes the near-infrared channel, which highlights the island’s vegetation in bright red.

Andros Island is actually an archipelago consisting of hundreds of small islets and three major islands: North Andros, Mangrove Cay, and South Andros. Andros Island from space is a very cool image to see with the different bright colors.

Andros Island is an archipelago within the Bahamas, the largest of the Bahamian Islands. Politically considered a single island, Andros in total has an area greater than all the other 700 Bahamian islands combined. The land area of Andros consists of hundreds of small islets and cays connected by mangrove estuaries and tidal swamplands, together with three major islands: North Andros, Mangrove Cay, and South Andros. The three main islands are separated by “bights”, estuaries that trifurcate the island, connecting the island’s east and west coasts. It is 167 kilometres (104 mi) long by 64 km (40 mi) wide at the widest point.

Noteworthy for a unique combination of marine features and ecosystems, Andros is bordered on the east by the 2,000-metre-deep (6,600 ft) Tongue of the Ocean. The Andros Barrier Reef[2] is the world’s sixth longest. It runs for 225 km (140 mi), averaging a distance of 2–3 km (1–2 mi) from the Andros shore.The extensive flats of the Great Bahama Bank lie to the west, northwest and south of Andros. The island has the world’s largest collection of blue holes

By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer

Image Credit: European Space Agency

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