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Operation Ice Bridge Sees An
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An iceberg is seen out the w
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11/3/09
| Description |
An iceberg is seen out the window of NASA's DC-8 research aircraft as it flies 2,000 feet above the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica on Wednesday, Oct., 21, 2009. This was taken on the fourth science flight of NASA's Operation Ice Bridge airborne Earth science mission to study Antarctic ice sheets, sea ice, and ice shelves. At the mid-point of this field campaign, seven flights over Antarctica have been completed in the first 13 days of Operation Ice Bridge. The mission is on track to complete its 17 planned flights by mid-November. Which flight target is flown on a given day is largely determined by difficult-to-forecast Antarctic weather conditions. Several of the instruments onboard cannot gather data through clouds. Twice so far, however, flights have been scrubbed at the last minute due to snow at the airport in southernmost Chile. As of the landing of the Oct. 27 flight, completed targets included: three flights over glaciers, two over sea ice, one over the Getz ice shelf, and one to study the topography of the ice sheet on the mission's closest approach to the South Pole. Photo Credit: NASA/Jane Peterson |
| Date |
11/3/09 |
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Earth - Antarctica Mosaic
PIA00116
Sol (our sun)
Solid-State Imaging
| Title |
Earth - Antarctica Mosaic |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This color picture of the limb of the Earth, looking north past Antarctica, is a mosaic of 11 images taken during a ten-minute period near 5:45 p.m. PST Dec. 8, 1990, by Galileo's imaging system. Red, green and violet filters were used. The picture spans about 1,600 miles across the south polar latitudes of our planet. The morning day/night terminator is toward the right. The South Pole is out of sight below the picture, the visible areas of Antarctica are those lying generally south of South America. The violet-blue envelope of Earth's atmosphere is prominent along the limb to the left. At lower left, the dark blue Amundsen Sea lies to the left of the Walgreen and Bakutis Coasts. Beyond it, Peter Island reacts with the winds to produce a striking pattern of atmospheric waves. |
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Icebergs Adrift in the Amund
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PIA03700
Sol (our sun)
Multi-angle Imaging SpectroR
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| Title |
Icebergs Adrift in the Amundsen Sea |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The Thwaites Ice Tongue is a large sheet of glacial ice extending from the West Antarctic mainland into the southern Amundsen Sea. A large crack in the Thwaites Tongue was discovered in imagery from Terra's Moderate Resolution Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MODIS). Subsequent widening of the crack led to the calving of a large iceberg. The development of this berg, designated B-22 by the National Ice Center, can be observed in these images from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer, also aboard Terra. The two views were acquired by MISR's nadir (vertical-viewing)camera on March 10 and 24, 2002. The B-22 iceberg, located below and to the left of image center, measures approximately 82 kilometers long x 62 kilometers wide. Comparison of the two images shows the berg to have drifted away from the ice shelf edge. The breakup of ice near the shelf edge, in the area surrounding B-22, is also visible in the later image. These natural-color images were acquired during Terra orbits 11843 and 12047, respectively. At the right-hand edge is Pine Island Bay, where the calving of another large iceberg (B-21) occurred in November 2001. B-21 subsequently split into two smaller bergs, both of which are visible to the right of B-22. Antarctic researchers have reported an increase in the frequency of iceberg calvings in recent years. Whether this is the result of a regional climate variation, or connected to the global warming trend, has not yet been established. MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. |
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Antarctica obtained from a m
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| Title |
Antarctica obtained from a mosaic of 11 images taken by Galileo spacecraft |
| Description |
Galileo spacecraft image of the Earth recorded after completing its first Earth Gravity Assist. This image of Antarctica was obtained from a mosaic of 11 images taken during a ten minute period near 5:45 pm Pacific Standard Time (PST) 12-08-90 by the Galileo spacecraft imaging system. Red, green, and violet filters were used. The picture spans about 1,600 miles across the south polar latitudes of our planet. The morning day/night terminator is toward the right. The South Pole is out of sight below the picture, the visible areas of Antarctica are those lying generally south of South America. The violet-blue envelope of Earth's atmosphere is prominent along the limb to the left. At lower left, the dark blue Amundsen Sea lies to the left of the Walgreen and Bakutis Coasts. Beyond it, Peter Island reacts with the winds to produce a striking pattern of atmospheric waves. Photo provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) with alternate number P-37340, 12-19-90. |
| Date Taken |
1990-12-31 |
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