NASA just took some of the best images of the Arctic we've ever seen
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On February 11, 2013, the Landsat 8 satellite rocketed into space to extend a four-decade legacy of Earth observations. A few months after launch, we published a composite of images that spanned 9,000 kilometers of land from Russia to South Africa. In celebration of the satellite's second anniversary, the mosaic concept returns with a chilly twist, this time featuring a slice of the Arctic Circle.The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this unbroken swath of images on June 21, 2014-the summer solstice-when the Sun stays above the horizon of the Arctic for at least 24 hours. While much of the region is still frozen in June, the ice is in various stages of melting.The Landsat 8 swath begins in Sweden and Finland, then crosses the Greenland Sea and northern Greenland. The scenes then take us over North America, through Canada's Nunavut and Northwest Territories, before ending up offshore of British Columbia. In its entirety, the flyover covers an area about 6,800 kilometers long and 200 kilometers wide (4,200 by 120 miles)."These Landsat swaths provide stunning views of transitions across the most remote and infrequently visited areas of our planet," said Jim Irons, NASA's project scientist for Landsat 8.Advertisement
We have highlighted eight favorite scenes at the bottom of this page. Some features, such as the subglacial lake, are the focus of ongoing research. Others were selected simply for their striking beauty.
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