Vega Island: Landsat shows skull face in ice

Vega Island, a speck of ice-covered land in the Weddell Sea east of the Antarctic Peninsula, looks like a smirking skull in profile in new satellite images released by NASA Earth Observatory, which says bare ice on the island points to a poor snow year for its glaciers.

Vega Island: Landsat 9 view of the island on 10 October 2026, with bare grey ice showing — Landsat 9 view of the island on 10 October 2026, with bare grey ice showing Photo: NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin, Landsat data from USGS (public domain).

How Vega Island forms a skull

NASA said ice, rock outcrops and glacial moraines combine to create the face, which looks toward Devil Island. A nunatak, a rocky peak poking through the ice, forms an eye socket, a lateral moraine forms a mouth, and the Bahía del Diablo (Devil’s Bay) Glacier forms a jawbone. The images were taken by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 9 on 22 March 2025, at the start of austral autumn, and on 10 October 2026, in spring; clouds hid the island in March 2026. In the March 2025 image a layer of snow coats the ice, typical of the region’s wettest month, while in October 2026 snow is missing from large areas and darker ice shows through.

Key Facts

Place: Vega Island, Weddell Sea, east of the Antarctic Peninsula
Satellite: Landsat 9 (OLI)
Images: 22 March 2025 and 10 October 2026
Glaciers catalogued: 29 (1982 study)
Expert: glaciologist Mauri Pelto, Nichols College

Bare ice and glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula

Above-average temperatures in winter 2026, particularly in June, were partly responsible for so much bare ice in October, said glaciologist Mauri Pelto of Nichols College. He said the exposed ice on Vega and nearby islands shows limited new snow over the winter, further reduced by sublimation and wind scouring. “The winter season was no treat for these glaciers,” he said. Because bare ice is darker than snow and absorbs more solar energy, melting is set to speed up as days grow longer and warmer. “Even a thin cover of new snow from a spring storm would be helpful in the short run,” Pelto said, adding that melt will change the skull’s jawline and widen its eye socket.

The same island on 22 March 2025, coated in snow Photo: NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin, Landsat data from USGS (public domain).

Landsat records of Vega Island's ice

NASA said the first comprehensive mapping of the island’s ice used Landsat imagery. A study published in 1982 described four ice caps with rocky cliffs and outlet glaciers, and catalogued 29 glaciers on Vega using early Landsat data, aerial photos and maps. Devil’s Bay Glacier has been monitored since the austral summer of 1998-1999, with researchers measuring an overall loss of mass, and recent satellite images show ice loss from other glaciers too, with more exposed bedrock. The island also has a place in polar history: Cape Well-met, off the skull’s “forehead”, was where two groups of the Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901-1903 were reunited in spring 1903, before an Argentine expedition rescued the survivors.

Why It Matters: Snow-free glaciers in spring are an early warning of faster melting on the Antarctic Peninsula, one of the fastest-changing parts of the polar region.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory: Vega Island Frozen in Fright · USGS Landsat · World Glacier Monitoring Service