Hundreds of images and scientific papers have come out of NASA’s Operation IceBridge, which ended this week.
The waters around Antarctica are home to some enormous icebergs. But it wasn’t size that caught the eye of John Sonntag when he snapped this photo. Measuring just a few hundred meters across, the iceberg off East Antarctica is actually quite small relative to others in the area.
“The moody and rather spectacular lighting was what made me take the photo,” said Sonntag, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “There was a thin, low stratus [cloud] deck at about 3,000 feet above the surface, but broken, which let direct light through at some points and not at others. It made that little berg really stand out.”
Sonntag shot the photo on November 18, 2019, during a research flight for Operation IceBridge—NASA’s comprehensive airborne survey of ice change. The flight originated in Hobart, Australia, and carried the science team across the Southern Ocean to survey ice in East Antarctica’s Wilkes Land district. The plane passed over Porpoise Bay, where sea ice had a firm grip on the iceberg.
Continue reading at NASA Earth Observatory
Image via NASA Earth Observatory
