Satellite image of Antarcticas Argentine Islands captured on February 16, 2023, by the Operational Land Imager-2 on Landsat 9. The Antarctic island functioned as a winter base for early 20th-century polar explorers.Topped year-round with a layer of ice, Antarcticas Argentine Islands show a winter-like appearance even in summertime. Ice caps show up across half of the total land location in summer season, though the percentage is a bit greater on Winter Island where an ice cap spans about 70 percent of the land.Landsat 9s OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager-2) obtained these images on February 16, 2023, during the southern hemispheres summer season. The wide view (above) shows the island groups place with respect to the Kyiv Peninsula that tasks from the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula.Close-up view of Antarcticas Argentine Islands recorded on February 16, 2023, by the Operational Land Imager-2 on Landsat 9. The summertime season offers enough daylight for satellites to acquire natural color images this far south. It is also the time of year when sea ice around Antarctica has actually melted, making it much easier to identify the ice-capped islands versus the dark-blue Bellingshausen Sea. A number of days after these images were obtained, sea ice around Antarctica reached the most affordable level ever observed considering that the start of the satellite record in 1979. The low-ice trend continued through winter– a time when the ice cover ought to have been growing at a much faster rate throughout the darkest and coldest months.Before there were satellites, knowledge of the area came from the polar explorers and property surveyors who visited face to face. Winter season Island takes its name from the British Graham Land Expedition (1934– 1937) that used the island as a winter season base in 1935. Expedition members surveyed the area from the air with aircraft and from the ground with dogsled groups, making the most of sea ice to take a trip along the coast. The exploration effectively mapped much of the coastline of Graham Land, the northern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula.Research operations have because been transferred to the surrounding Galindez Island, which is now the website of Ukraines Vernadsky Research Base. Visitors with approval can still access Wordie House, the historical base on Winter Island. Visitors might also come across some of the regions locals, consisting of the Adélie and Gentoo penguins.NASA Earth Observatory images by Wanmei Liang, utilizing Landsat information from the U.S. Geological Survey.
