Birth of an iceberg

Envisat captures the birth of a giant iceberg that has broken off from the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. Spanning 34 km in length by 20 km in width, the new iceberg covers an area nearly half the size of Greater London. This animation is comprised of images acquired between September 2006 and October 2007 by the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument aboard ESA’s Envisat satellite. The area covered in the images is approximately 230 by 250 km.