Blue Lagoon
Photograph courtesy NASA
The turquoise lagoon of French Polynesia's Mataiva atoll stands out against the dark blue of the surrounding Pacific Ocean in an image taken by an astronaut on August 13.
The atoll—a ring-shaped island enclosing a central lagoon—is part of the Tuamotu Archipelago, the largest chain of atolls on Earth. Mataiva is unique in that its central lagoon includes a network of ridges (white, center) and small basins formed by eroded coral reefs, according to NASA's Earth Observatory, which released the photo on August 30. (See more pictures of French Polynesia.)
Forest (greenish brown) covers much of the outside perimeter of the six-mile-long (ten-kilometer-long) atoll.
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