Landsat image of Vega Island shows bare ice spreading in the Weddell Sea

Background

A NASA Earth Observatory image of the day has drawn attention to Vega Island, which lies in the Weddell Sea off the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The pictures were taken by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 9, one in March 2025 and the other in October 2026, because cloud hid the island in March 2026. Seen in profile, the island's ice, rock outcrops and glacial moraines form a skull-like shape looking towards Devil Island. A nunatak, that is a rock outcrop poking through the ice, forms the eye socket, a lateral moraine forms the mouth and the Bahia del Diablo glacier forms the jawbone. The forehead is Cape Well-met, where two parties of the Swedish Antarctic Expedition met again in the spring of 1903. In the 2025 image snow covers the ice, while in the 2026 image large areas are bare and darker, which the glaciologist Mauri Pelto attributes to above-average winter temperatures and limited snow accumulation.