Photo: NASA releases stunning satellite images of Arctic

Glaciers at the top of Ellesmere Island: up close and personal. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released images Feb. 18 that were captured two years ago by something called the Operational Land Imager on board the U.S.-owned Landsat 8 currently orbiting earth. The OLI recorded an unbroken swath from Sweden and Finland, across Greenland and the Canadian Arctic to an area offshore of British Columbia — a stripe of data 6,800 kms long and 200 kms wide. “These Landsat swaths provide stunning views of transitions across the most remote and infrequently visited areas of our planet,” said Jim Irons, a NASA project scientist, in an online explanation of the images. You can see some of the images pulled from that swath by going here: http://tinyurl.com/prnze47. (PHOTO COURTESY OF NASA)