Southern Greenland from Landsat 7

The full-size image is 19000 pixels square and 24 MB.

This an orthographic mosaic containing data from 12 Landsat 7 images. The longitude range is 41 to 51 degrees west and the latitude range is 59 to 64 degrees north. The mosaic shows a spectacular and complex 'maze' of long and narrow fjords and islands, narrow valleys flanked by steep mountains, glaciers and glacial rivers, countless lakes and ponds and in general a landscape that has been shaped by advancing and retreating glaciers, depending on climate.

The source images were selected to get a mosaic almost free from clouds over the land areas so they were obtained at various times in 1999-2002. Almost all of data present in the mosaic was obtained in July or August (small parts in June). Processed using mainly GDAL (Geospatial Data Abstraction Library) and Photoshop. It should be noted that I had to make major 'manual' changes to the clouds in the south to remove seams between images taken at different times (or even years) but the 'manual' changes to the land areas are minor. Overall the image should be very realistic even though for ultimate reality the white glaciers should be roughly 2-3 times brighter than shown here, relative to ice free terrain.

More information about the processing of this image is available in this blog entry.

Here is a detail view: