Claim
Photo of Antarctica taken from space.
Fact
Newshecker ran a reverse image search of the photo, which led us to this write-up on Slate, dated August 17, 2016, stating that the viral image is actually a visualisation of data, a computer-generated image showing the extent of sea ice around Antarctica on September 21, 2005. A similar article can be seen here.
“The overall image is a composite from several different Earth-observing satellites, but the sea ice is from the AMSR-E detector on board the Aqua satellite. It uses microwaves to measure the extent of ice floating in the ocean. This was then mapped onto a computer-generated globe of the Earth from Blue Marble Next Generation (using different data from AMSR-E to estimate the ice colour). The terrain map is actually from 2004, a year before the ice data was taken,” read the article, featuring the viral photo. The photo’s credit read, “NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio; The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).”
We then looked up NASA’s Scientific Visualisation Studio’s write-up, dated February 15, 2007, where it stated, “In support of International Polar Year, this matching pair of images showing a global view of the Arctic and Antarctic were generated in poster-size resolution. Both images show the sea ice on September 21, 2005, the date at which the sea ice was at its minimum extent in the northern hemisphere.”
Result: Missing Context
Sources
Slate, August 17, 2016
NASA’s Scientific Visualisation Studio
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