by Kathryn Hansen NASA Earth Observatory
Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The October 2018 puzzler is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us what we are looking at and why it is interesting.
How to answer. You can use a few words or several paragraphs. You might simply tell us the location. Or you can dig deeper and explain what satellite and instrument produced the image, what spectral bands were used to create it, or what is compelling about some obscure feature in the image. If you think something is interesting or noteworthy, tell us about it.
The prize. We can’t offer prize money or a trip to Mars, but we can promise you credit and glory. Well, maybe just credit. Roughly one week after a puzzler image appears on this blog, we will post an annotated and captioned version as our Image of the Day. After we post the answer, we will acknowledge the first person to correctly identify the image at the bottom of this blog post. We also may recognize readers who offer the most interesting tidbits of information about the geological, meteorological, or human processes that have shaped the landscape. Please include your preferred name or alias with your comment. If you work for or attend an institution that you would like to recognize, please mention that as well.
Recent winners. If you’ve won the puzzler in the past few months or if you work in geospatial imaging, please hold your answer for at least a day to give less experienced readers a chance to play.
Releasing Comments. Savvy readers have solved some puzzlers after a few minutes. To give more people a chance to play, we may wait between 24 to 48 hours before posting comments.
Good luck!
NOTE: WUWT readers are welcome to comment and speculate here, but to win the contest, you will need to post the comment on the NASA website here
Thanks, Anthony
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the great pacific ocean plastic blob? 😉
Last night, my daughter, who used to do digital mapping imagery, said she didn’t think it looked like an ice floe (cut off shelf of sea ice) — she said she thought the edges were too straight. She said it’s too bad there wasn’t an infrared image of the same area — that would confirm whether it was sea ice or not.
Your daughter isn’t very knowledgeable about the Antarctic. Large bergs breaking off from ice shelves are often rather long and narow with remarkably straight edges. Se this image for an example:
http://en.es-static.us/upl/2018/06/iceberg-b15-2000.jpg
Plenty of straight lines here:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=429.0;attach=110420;image
I think the label “giant coffin” is sensationalism without any justification in the image. In fact, it’s not obvious from the image that the image is coffin-like, assuming the reference is to the seemingly solid shape underneath what appear to be clouds. For one thing, it appears rather two-dimensional, and as such comparison to a kite would be much more apt. As for it being “giant” – well, assuming we’re looking at a cloudscape, would something the size of a coffin even be visible in the object’s position? If I were forced to hazard an off the cuff guess as to the origin of this “coffin”-like image, I would suggest Russian floe hackers intent on influencing the American electorate, or at least the bible-thumping contingent.
Its the Arctic, buried at sea, or a snow covered ship of fools.
Weather balloon. Sea ice is too easy. Hearkens Deep Purple: ” Smoke on the water fire in the sky”.
White plastic suspended just below the surface ,in an ice water tub, the bottom colored blue. Perhaps a trash bag, in a backyard pool , in the Rockies, soon after one of the recent cold fronts .
It’s clear that the cumulus cloud deck is unaffected by the “coffin-shaped” object beneath it, so the two things are quite independent. That object has high albedo, and its edges are sharp and almost linear, both indicating that the object is solid. This would mean that the object must be floating on the water surface beneath the cloud deck, and therefore it must have a lower density than the water on which it’s floating. Considering all the foregoing, the most likely explanation is that the object is water ice, probably broken off a floating ice shelf. The “coffin” shape would therefore be purely accidental.
giant ice berg purposefully calved in the shape of a dagger
headed towards Brazil
ramming speed required
they must be punished for electing a nationalist
Back when I was nothing but a lowly puke with aspirations of becoming a full member of the DTD fraternity, I was occasionally required to define my current status. The only acceptable answer was “sir, I am so low that whale sh!t on the bottom of the ocean looks like fleecy white clouds way up in the sky.” Could that be the bottom of an ice berg? I don’t trust the too-obvious answer.