NASA Found Not One But Two Freaky Rectangular Icebergs; Here's How

Space

A picture of a sharp-angled, tabular iceberg went viral after it was posted on social media. It wasn't the only rectangular iceberg photographed that day.

ByRon Brackett•

October 28, 2018

Updated: October 28, 2018, 1:03 pm EDTPublished: October 28, 2018, 1:03 pm EDT

Intriguing Rectangular Iceberg Spotted in Antartica

That giant rectangular iceberg that freaked out so many people a couple of weeks ago wasn't the only unusually sharp-angled slab of ice NASA photographed that day.

The Operation IceBridge flight on Oct. 16 captured a second, smaller rectangular iceberg.

As the DC-8 flew over the northern Antarctic Peninsula that day, IceBridge senior support scientist Jeremy Harbeck was looking for a different chunk of ice: the Delaware-sized iceberg that calved off the Larsen C ice shelf in July 2017.

“I was actually more interested in capturing the A68 iceberg that we were about to fly over, but I thought this rectangular iceberg was visually interesting and fairly photogenic, so on a lark, I just took a couple photos,” Harbeck said in a NASA news release.

A rectangular tabular iceberg was photographed by Operation IceBridge on Oct. 16, 2018, during a flight over the northern Antarctic Peninsula. This panorama was edited together by NASA from two images taken while flying past the berg.
(NASA/Jeremy Harbeck)

The slab, known as a tabular iceberg, also appeared to be from Larsen C, but it cleaved off much more recently. That's likely why its edges remained so sharp and its top so pristine.

“I thought it was pretty interesting; I often see icebergs with relatively straight edges, but I've not really seen one before with two corners at such right angles like this one had,” Harbeck said.

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It wasn't the only tabular berg Harbeck captured that morning. He photographed a slightly less rectangular iceberg, too. NASA released those photos in the past week.

Aboard the Oct. 16, 2018, Operation IceBridge flight, Jeremy Harbeck saw a second relatively rectangular iceberg. The bigger iceberg that went viral can be seen over the plane's engine.
(NASA/Jeremy Harbeck)

But it was the photo of the larger iceberg that went viral. Since NASA shared it on Twitter, it has been retweeted nearly 11,000 times.

Harbeck told the Earther blog, “Everyone from cousins-in-law to parents to a friend over in Europe has (messaged that they’ve) seen it.”

Harbeck has been on 62 IceBridge flights, he told Earther. He operates a camera that "helps calibrate highly sensitive laser mapping equipment called lidar that can precisely measure elevation changes in ice."

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The IceBridge flights are used to confirm data NASA receives from the ICESat-2 satellite that was launched just this September. Before ICESat-2 came online, the flights "bridged" the gap after the first ICESat satellite stopped collecting science data in 2009.

IceBridge conducts over Greenland in March through May. Flights over Antarctica are in October and November.

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