Remember “that” iceberg? In mid-October, NASA shared an image of a bizarrely perfect rectangular iceberg they spotted near the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica. The internet exploded, although in reality, tabular icebergs are not all that uncommon.
The photo was taken during a fly-over of the Antarctic Peninsula. It was part of Operation IceBridge, which is NASA’s longest-running aerial survey of polar ice. The strange iceberg was spotted by IceBridge senior support scientist Jeremy Harbeck. “I thought it was pretty interesting,” he said. “I often see icebergs with relatively straight edges, but I’ve not really seen one before with two corners at such right angles like this one had.”
In the fly-over, Harbeck was actually more interested in taking pictures of an iceberg called A68, but thought the rectangular one was visually appealing. It was actually one of two tabular icebergs, which can both be seen in the video above. “On a lark,” he said, “I just took a couple photos.”
