A new cloud-free, 150 m resolution composite satellite image of Antarctica has been created and is available for download. The image is a result of a partnership between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center and the University of New Hampshire. The satellite image is a mosaic of images taken from NASA’s Moderate Imaging Resolution Spectrometer’s Terra and Aqua satellites. A new digital elevation model of the continent is expected to be released next year.

From the press release: “The Antarctic Mosaic shows a lot of very subtle changes in the slope of the terrain that you cannot see from the ground,” says Robert Bindschadler, chief scientist of Goddard’s Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory. “These subtle variations are important because they tell us the direction the ice is flowing now and they indicate where it has gone in the past. The surface roughness also tells us about the bed underneath the ice and whether the ice is sliding over the bed or frozen to it.”

The image above is a sample taken from 750 m hue-lightness-saturation image converted to red-green-blue 24-bit colour.