Earth Observations taken by the Expedition 15 Crew

ISS015-E-10118 (30 May 2007) --- A close-up view of an area of an iceberg in the South Atlantic Ocean is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 15 crewmember on the International Space Station. This iceberg illustrates the remains of a giant iceberg -- designated A22A that broke off Antarctica in 2002. This is one of the largest icebergs to drift as far north as 50 degrees south latitude, bringing it beneath the daylight path of the station. Crewmembers aboard the orbital complex were able to locate the ice mass and photograph it, despite great cloud masses of winter storms in the Southern Ocean. Dimensions of A22A in early June were 49.9 x 23.4 kilometers, giving it an area of 622 square kilometers, or seven times the area of Manhattan Island. Once the station crew had located the iceberg, they managed to image it successfully with the "long" 800-mm lens. Handling the longer lens requires practice: with the speed of movement of the spacecraft and the length of the lens, it is necessary to "track" the target, which is, swinging the camera slowly to keep the target in the middle of the view finder. If you track too slowly or too fast, the image looks smeared. As in this image, the long lens only shows a small part of the iceberg. A series of parallel lines, termed "hummocks", can be seen. These hummocks are probably dunes of snow that have become solidified, and date back to the time when the iceberg was connected to Antarctica. A developing fracture in the ice is also visible at upper left.