After breaking off the Petermann Glacier on August 5, 2010, a massive ice island floated slowly down the fjord toward the Nares Strait. The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this false-color image of the ice island on August 11, 2010. In this image, ice is light blue, water is nearly black, and clouds are nearly white. Although a bank of thin clouds hovers over the fjord, the southernmost margin of the ice island is still visible. Toward the north, the leading edge of the ice island retains the same shape it had days earlier, at the time of the initial calving.
NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. Caption by Michon Scott.
