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NASA's ongoing, decades-long survey of polar ice has yielded some truly incredible photographs over the years, but one recent one has just been captured perfectly, almost impossibly rectangular iceberg.
Snapped by NASA's ICE mission, as part of IceBridge's operation, the giant tabular iceberg is the limit of the ice shelf.
From yesterday's #IceBridge A tabular iceberg can be seen on the right, floating among the sea ice off the ice shelf. The iceberg's sharp angles and flat surface indicate that it probably recently calved from the ice shelf. pic.twitter.com/XhgTrf642Z
– NASA ICE (@NASA_ICE) October 17, 2018
As with regular icebergs, just 10 percent of its mass is visible in the picture, though the subsurface mass would be similar to what is visible above.
We tend to think of icebergs as jagged and pointy, with the bulk of the surface, and a penchant for ruining DiCaprio romances.
However, tabular icebergs are huge slabs of ice with a flat top and vertical sides that form by 'calving' or splitting off a much larger ice shelf. They can take more geometrically pleasing shapes than their more rugged, non-tabular counterparts.
These particular icebergs can be truly immense, such as the 11,000 square kilometer (4,200 square mile) B-15, the world's largest free-floating object ever recorded.
NASA boffins have yet to measure this latest contender, but it is unlikely that it is unlikely to be a B-15 off the top spot for the world's biggest iceberg, at a paltry (though still impressive, let's be honest) 1.6km wide.
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The incredibly clean edges indicate how new this iceberg is, as the wind and the sea have yet to erode its flanks.
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