Comment by nl

7 hours ago

It's not explicitly stated but it seems that this island was not charted because the area it was in had previously been full of icebergs.

> On the satellite images analysed, the island could hardly be distinguished from the numerous icebergs drifting around in the immediate vicinity due to its ice cover.

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nl

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madaxe_again  14 minutes ago

Also, it’s Antarctica. Observation at the poles is patchy compared to elsewhere on Earth. Low satellite coverage, illumination issues, lack of incentives, etc. - and that’s just satellite and aerial ops, never mind boots on the ground.

I was in the Antarctic about a decade ago, and this was underscored for me when we went to visit an island which has had maybe 20 humans visit, total - only to find it wasn’t where any of the charts said it was - it was about 3 miles away.

Fortunately we could just see it, as we had fine weather - which, upon further reading, neither of the previous surveys could, which explains the error - they had gone by dead reckoning in the era before GPS.

arcticfox  6 hours ago

I have no interest in finding islands, but it seems like it would be pretty easy to find icebergs that never move.

  • rtpg  3 hours ago

    reading this I was wondering about this.

    My sort of childlike mental model of satelite imagery of the planet is that we've "covered" everything but does anyone know at what frequency we do get new satelite imagery for places like the antarctic (or, say, the dead middle of the atlantic ocean?)

    I imagine that satelite imagery is a bit needs based but maybe every square meter of the earth is captured at least once a couple of months

    (Not the same thing but am reminded of how despite the importance of the internet and undersea cables for fixing things, there are _very very few_ boats that can actually repair them. Maybe there aren't that many satellites pointing at some parts of the globe)