Acquired on November 29 by Operation IceBridge during a flight to Victoria Land, this image shows an iceberg floating in Antarctica's McMurdo Sound. The part of the iceberg below water appears bluest primarily due to blue light from the water in the Sound. The undersides of some icebergs can be eroded away, exposing older, denser, and incredibly blue ice. Erosion can change an iceberg�s shape and cause it to flip, bringing the sculpted blue ice above the water�s surface. The unique step-like shape of this berg�compared to the tabular and more stable berg in the top-right of the image�suggests that it likely rotated sometime after calving.
Operation IceBridge�an airborne mission to map polar ice�recently made several flights out of the McMurdo and Amundsen-Scott South Pole stations, giving researchers greater access to the interior of the icy continent. For the ninth year in a row, flights over Antarctica have turned up ample science data, as well as spectacular images.
Image Credit: NASA/Chris Larsen
Explanation from: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-bluest-of-ice
Arsalan
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Related Posts
Globular Cluster Messier 79It�s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a bliz
The Moon seen by Galileo spacecraftDuring its flight, the Galileo spacecraft returned images of the Moon. The Galileo spacecraft surve
Exoplanet NGTS-1bThe Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) instrument at ESO�s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile
Exoplanet WASP-18bA NASA-led team has found evidence that the oversized planet WASP-18b is wrapped in a smothering st
Spiral Galaxy NGC 1398This picture shows spectacular ribbons of gas and dust wrapping around the pearly centre of the bar
Fomalhaut Debris DiskFomalhaut is one of the brightest stars in the sky. At roughly 25 light-years away the star lies es