Antarctica -Mapping The White Continent

Antarctica has always been one of those destinations that people have longed to visit. For those of us without the bank balances to reach the frosty snows of South Pole, another option is here.

Working together and using images primarily from the American Landsat spacecraft, US and UK researchers have pasted together more than a thousand images of Antarctica. The result is a magnificent high-definition image of Antarctica.

Supposedly 10 times more detailed than ever before, the The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica can be viewed through a free website, and will also be included virtual globe projects like Google Earth.

"This is how Antarctica really looks and you can have any piece of it you want. This really is Antarctica in true color," said Robert Bindschadler from the US space agency's (Nasa) Goddard Space Flight Center.

"Most people have never been to Antarctica, yet Lima is a way we can bring Antarctica to them."

The project is a collaborative effort between Nasa, the US Geological Survey (USGS), the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), and has searched through archival photos, looking for cloud free images of the white continent.

Already small sections of the massive photo have been shared with pilots who have wanted a ‘heads up’ on where they were flying. In the future, this mosaic will allow researchers on or going too Antarctica to see where they will be heading.

"Yes, it's stunning to look at - but it's not just a pretty picture," said Andrew Flemming from BAS.

"Taking over 1,000 satellite pictures and turning them into a near-seamless image of the entire continent is no trivial task. This is a real, calibrated, rigorously processed surface-reflectance dataset; so the values actually mean something and scientists will be able to compare values from one side of the continent with the other."

View LIMA Maps of Antarctica

Posted by Josh Hill