File:Icebergs D-28 and D-30A Drift Pass South Georgia Island (MODIS 2024-01-10).jpg

English: Normal image Image with highlighted icebergs

South Georgia Island has been described in two words: “icy and isolated”—an incomplete description, but one that captures the essence of the island.

South Georgia is a mountainous, glaciated island that spans roughly 106 miles (170 km) in length and 25 miles (40 km) in width. Sitting in the South Atlantic Ocean at the gateway to Antarctica, South Georgia and the neighboring South Sandwich Islands (all uninhabited) are certainly remote, located about 1,050 miles (1,700 km) east-northeast of the southern tip of South America and more than 2,500 miles (4,150 km) north of Antarctica. South Georgia Island is also unquestionably icy, topped by glaciers and sitting under snow year-round. It also is often surrounded by icebergs, which are essentially giant chunks of floating ice.

On January 7, 2024, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of South Georgia Island surrounded by two large icebergs, Icebergs D-28 and D-30A. The top image is completely natural, just as acquired by the instrument. The second image, which can be seen by clicking on “Image with highlighted icebergs", shows the same scene, but has been enhanced by outlining the edges of the icebergs and labeling them.

Iceberg D-28 can be seen drifting north of South Georgia Island while D-30A is floating south of the island. D-28 calved from the western half of the Amery Ice Shelf in 2019 and was named on September 25 of that year by the U.S. National Ice Center (USNIC). In June 2021, the drifting D-28 collided with the Borchgrevink Ice Shelf in the Queen Maude Land region in East Antarctica. The collision caused D-30 to calve from the ice shelf. Not long afterward, D-30 split to give rise to Iceberg D-30A. After drifting on similar currents, Icebergs D-28 and D-30A are taking separate but similar paths to the relatively warm waters of the Southern Atlantic Ocean, where they are expected to slowly melt.

In September 2023, NASA's Earth Observatory published an article on D-30A as it grazed Clarence Island, a smaller island about 60 miles (97 km) from South Georgia Island. To view that article, simply click here.