# @nasa on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Cg2aBrZt2V7
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/11732730-nasa-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/0ec806d9a9.jpg
- **Posted:** 2022-08-04T19:56:34.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** NASA (@NASA) — https://gondola.cc/NASA

## Caption

“We’ve got galaxies at home.”

Reminiscent of distant galaxies amid clouds of interstellar dust, this image taken 20 years ago today by the Landsat 7 satellite shows chunks of sea ice drifting through graceful swirls of grease ice in the frigid waters of Foxe Basin near Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. 

Sea ice often begins as grease ice, a soupy slick of tiny ice crystals on the ocean's surface. As the temperature drops, grease ice thickens and coalesces into slabs of more solid ice. Throughout most of the year, the waters of this area are choked with sea ice, but by the end of summer open water typically returns to dominate this part of the Canadian Arctic.

Observations such as this have been collected by the joint NASA and USGS Landsat program since 1972 and were made available to the public in 2008 at no charge. The data gathered by Landsat has allowed scientists worldwide to utilize these observations to study climate change and a host of other natural and human-caused changes to our environment.

Credit: USGS/NASA/Landsat 7

Alt text: Grease ice in the Foxe Basin near Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Enveloping the left, top, and center of the image are wispy white streaks of grease ice. Peppered among the wisps are flakes of solid ice. The bottom right quadrant of the image is largely ice-free and is a deep navy blue. Amongst the mixture of solid ice and grease ice, there are slivers of frigid Arctic water visible in small pockets of navy blue.  The mixture of viscous ice and frigid waters is similar to that of glitter mixed into a bucket of blue paint.

#NASA #USGS #Landsat #Earth #Ice #Arctic #ClimateChange #Climate #Nunavut #Data #TBT

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## Tags

landsat, ice, earth, tbt, nasa, climatechange, usgs, data, arctic, nunavut, climate

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