From BBC
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The EU’s Sentinel-2 satellite has obtained a crystal clear image of Antarctica’s new monster iceberg.
The 1,550-sq-km (600-sq-miles) frozen block broke away from the Brunt Ice Shelf late on Sunday GMT.
Its detachment occurred close to Britain’s Halley research station, which sits just 20km upstream from the line of rupture.
The base and its 21 occupants are all secure. Officials see no need for an evacuation.
Concerns had been expressed that a major Emperor penguin colony near the breakaway could have been disrupted.
The Emperors breed on sea-ice attached to the coast – so-called “fast ice”.
But the new Sentinel-2 picture clearly shows the stains from the birds’ excrement, or guano, to be on an ice platform that remains intact.
The imagery on this page was processed by Ben Wallis, from the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science at the University of Leeds.
It is on the Brunt Ice Shelf, which is the floating protrusion of glaciers that have flowed off the Antarctic continent into the Weddell Sea. On a map, the Weddell Sea is that sector of Antarctica directly to the south of the Atlantic Ocean. The Brunt is on the eastern side of the sea. Like all ice shelves, it will periodically calve icebergs. Prior to this
