Mapping Antarctica: Latest Satellite Imagery Brings Continent into High-Res Focus
…from The Antarctic Sun…
“Maps of Antarctica date back to when Roman geographer and astronomer Ptolemy envisioned a land in the southern hemisphere to counterbalance that in the north to satisfy an ancient sense of proportion. Terra Australis would remain terra incognita for more than 1,500 years, though that didn’t stop cartographers from drawing fanciful depictions of the southern continent, varying widely in size and location.
“Today, the average person can zoom across Antarctica with Google Earth. It’s even possible to download high-definition images of ice and mountaintops thanks to an International Polar Year External U.S. government site project that created a map mosaic of the continent from more than 1,000 satellite images — the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA) External U.S. government site. [See previous story: Getting on the map.]
“But Paul Morin knows those images and the maps created from them can get even better, practically proselytizing about a new promised land of high-resolution imagery in which one can literally count the boulders on the ground.”
