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The Sun Also Sets

The crescent Moon watches over the painted sky of sunset in December 2006 in the equatorial Pacific Ocean off of Mexico. The A-frame of the research vessel Atlantis and the Alvin launching equipment are silhouetted by the setting sun. By the time the Sun would rose again, researchers were preparing to inject harmless sulfur hexafluoride tracers into the trough of the East Pacific Rise in order to study the mixing of water and the dispersion of larvae near a seafloor hydrothermal system. (Photo by Patrick Ryan Johnson, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)