An OT Good Evening to you ALL!!

[Three over Four]

Just had to share this South Caspian Sea image with y'll, and the accompanying text since it can't be the 'Image of the Day' for too long...

"This Envisat image shows the southern part of the Caspian Sea, the world's largest inland body of water with a total surface area of 371 000 square kilometres.

The oil-rich Caspian stretches 1200 km from north to south and is bordered by Russia and Kazakhstan to the north, Azerbaijan to the west, Turkmenistan to the east and Iran to the south.

The Caspian has experienced large variations in its water level in the last few decades, a development at least partly due to human activity including the building of dams. It fell during the 1960s and 1970s, has risen since then, but may now be falling again.

The Caspian Sea is divided into three main parts: a shallow 10-metre-deep northern end, a middle part with an average depth of 170m and a maximum depth of 790m and the southern (shown here) and deepest part with an average depth of 325m and a maximum depth of 1025m.

Because the Caspian is a closed body of water, it supports a unique biodiversity but is also vulnerable to pollution from agriculture and industry – particularly oil. The Caspian Basin is rich in oil deposits; the oil centre of Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, is located on the southern side of the Apsheron Peninsula jetting out from the western shore.

Across from Baku on the other side of the Caspian is the country of Turkmenistan, its territory dominated by the Karakum Desert. On the Caspian's southern shores are Iran’s green Gilan-Mazanderan lowlands and the Alborz (Elburz) mountain range, which acts as a barrier to rain clouds moving south, explaining the contrast between the fertile lowlands to the north and the desert to the south.

This image was acquired by Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument on 2 September 2006 working in Full Resolution mode to provide a spatial resolution of 300 metres."

I get geeky about shit like this, cause I work with aerial photos at work...they become rather intriguing to me when they are on such a large scale. Anyhoo, enough of my yakkin.... with warning to the dialup users here it is:

http://www.redorbit.com/modules/imglib/ ... 1a312c.jpg

AWESOME....to this geek anyways...

[Three over Four]

....so much for good evening!! I'm walking by the PC after some late dinner and of course my mind says to me 'you can just pop into the forum for just a second....no biggie' And poof! Here I am again just like that!! It is not I who am crazy....It is I who am MAD!! Oooh, my beloved ice cream sandwich...

[jedsoon]

Dude, that's so...

out there..!

[georgygirl]

Great image!

[Three over Four]

It never ceases to amaze me how huge our world seems in places like Montana or Idaho where it's as sparcely populated as can be, but how incredibly small it looks when shot from space. I really hope that at some point in my lifetime space tourism becomes a reality....I'd *love* to view our planet from orbit at some point in my lifetime....