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Ice Stars

Like distant galaxies amid clouds of interstellar dust, chunks of sea ice drift through graceful swirls of grease ice in the frigid waters of Foxe Basin near Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic.
Like distant galaxies amid clouds of interstellar dust, chunks of sea ice drift through graceful swirls of grease ice in the frigid waters of Foxe Basin near Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic.

Like distant galaxies amid clouds of interstellar dust, chunks of sea ice drift 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.

This image was acquired 20 years ago today by the Landsat 7 satellite. To learn more about the NASA/USGS Landsat Program, visit https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov.

Image Credit: USGS/NASA/Landsat 7