Antarctica Map - A New Age (NG)

A New Age of Exploration:
Maps of Antarctica’s interior remained mostly white blanks into the mid-1980’s. Satellites using visible light had produced detailed surface images, but their angles of view excluded more than 1.2 million square miles poleward of about 82 degrees south latitude. Then in 1997 the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) rotated its Radarsat I satellite in orbit, directing its radar sensor toward the South Pole. The first Antarctic Mapping Mission, a joint project of CSA and NASA in the US, imaged the entire continent in just 18 days at a resolution many times finer than any other single satellite survey. Compiling Radarsat’s 4500 scans into the digital mosaic seen here required two years. Dark areas on the map indicate smooth ice and fine-grained surfaces, like new snow, that don’t scatter the radar beam. Coarse surfaces – old granular snow, rough ice and crevasses – break up the beam and appear bright. During its many passes over the continent the satellite scanned the surface in strips, producing the faint starburst effect that patterns the image. In 2000, Radarsat remapped Antarctica’s coast and most of its fast moving glaciers, astonishing researchers with detailed images of recent change.

Review:
“This map includes the most information available on any map of Antarctica, it is essentially a map and natural history book combined. It is produced with the superior National Geographic quality we’ve come to expect and rely on. ” – Thomas TAC