Luxembourg-Sized Antarctic Berg Smacks Into Ice Shelf - BBC

Cool photos!

"An iceberg the size of Luxembourg has smashed into another vast slab of ice that juts out from Antarctica. The 115km-long B-15A iceberg broke off a 5km-long section of the Drygalski ice tongue when it collided with the prominence in the Ross Sea.

The iceberg itself so far appears unaffected by the smash-up.

More of the B-15A iceberg still has to pass by Drygalski, so the ice tongue may be in for even more punishment in the coming days, experts have said. The European Space Agency's Earth-observation platform Envisat has returned some remarkable images of the collision.

ling From January, the iceberg has been on a collision course with the 70-km-long Drygalski ice tongue in McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea. In the last month, prevailing currents have been slowly edging B-15A along past the northern edge of Drygalski. The iceberg could cause yet more problems. It appears to be rotating into Terra Nova Bay, where it could cause problems for penguins trying to feed and for the Italian Mario Zuchelli research base which is located there."

EDIT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4460335.stm

on Jan 14/15 this year - the date they were supposed to collide. A bunch of us squeezed into the ship's ice tower to watch the show.

http://www.polar.org/antsun/Sun012305/index.htm

(scroll down to the NBP sitrep)

Unfortunately for us (and we were expecting a Big Show), the berg grounded ~3.89 nm away from the Ice Tongue. We did see some Minke whales and a few Adele penguins but no collision.

We only had a few hours to linger at that location, but it was still impressive.

B-15A was huge, and a constant presence on the horizon (a long unbroken white line). The gap between B-15A and the Drygalski funneled the southerly wind and created some ominous looking clouds.

If I get ambitious this weekend I'll try to post some pics...

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