Thinking about settling down? You're just like sediment. Landsat 5, an Earth-observing satellite, captured this natural color image of the middle portion of the Mergui Archipelago on Dec. 14, 2004. The archipelago in the Andaman Sea is made up of more than 800 islands surrounded by extensive coral reefs. Sediments in the rivers, seen at top middle, make them appear nearly white. As those sediments slowly settle out and are deposited on the seafloor, they make swirling patterns in the near-shore waters. They settle more as you move away from the shore, returning the water to a deep blue color. Landsat 5 launched on March 1, 1984, and was decommissioned on June 5, 2013, far outliving its three-year design life. The satellite orbited the planet more than 150,000 times over the course of 28 years and 10 months while transmitting over 2.5 million images of land surface conditions around the world, officially setting a new Guinness World Records title for “Longest-operating Earth obser...