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A massive iceberg broke off Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica, in September 2017. Instead of drifting out to sea after calving, sea ice impeded the iceberg’s movement, and it cracked up into countless pieces nearly on the spot. Even though it broke up relatively quickly for an iceberg, it is more of a slow-motion shattering.

These Landsat images show the change at the end of the glacier. The September 21 image was acquired days before the iceberg broke off. A rift is visible running across the glacier almost 8 kilometers from the calving face.

By January 2, 2018, the iceberg had broken into fragments of varying size. The dark feature is a polynya, an area of relatively warmer water, which likely caused the iceberg’s breakup.

Landsat 8 has been acquiring observable images roughly every three days from early December to January because of its ability to acquire sunlit nighttime images during Antarctic summer. Frequent acquisitions aid in tracking the movements of the ice pieces and project future behavior of the glacier.

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