Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Elephant Island by Landsat 8
2020-12-13
- Classification
- Photograph
- Museum
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit line
- https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147696/elephant-island
- Rights
- Public domain, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed
About this work
When explorer Ernest Shackleton and the crew of Endurance lost their ship to crushing pack ice in the Weddell Sea in 1915, their chances of survival seemed dim. The 28 men spent months drifting on ice floes and traversing the Southern Ocean in small lifeboats until they finally spotted land. The hunk of rock and ice was not the welcoming refuge they hoped for, but it was enough.
Shackleton and the crew of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition landed on the mountainous, ice-covered island today known as Elephant Island. Some say Elephant Island got its name from the sighting of elephant seals along its shores; others suggest it comes from its appearance as an elephant head. But Shackleton’s captain claimed it was a nickname given by the crew: “Hell-of-an-Island.”
The image above shows a rare, cloud-free view of the remote island on December 13, 2020, as captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. The highest points, Mount Pendragon (970 meters or 3,200 feet) and Mount Elder (945 meters or 3,100 feet), are located on the southern side. In the center, Endurance glacier collects most of the ice flowing in the southeast direction.
Elephant Island is located about…
