What happens when the snowy north is hit by an earthquake? NASA scientists accidentally found out.
These images were taken of the Seward Glacier in north-western Canada, before and after a magnitude 6 earthquake struck the region on 17 July. The first photo, taken the day before the quake, shows dark rocks and debris from an earlier landslide in stark contrast with the snow. In the second photo, taken on 21 July, this debris has been dwarfed by a further avalanche.
The Alaska-based NASA team had not been hunting for these before-and-after shots of a chilly earthquake. They were making regular flights over the area to help prepare them for analysing images from ICESat-2, a satellite due to be launched in 2017. As part of this process, a camera had been placed in the nose of their aircraft, in order to record the terrain below.
When they found out an earthquake had shaken up the glacier and realised they had been flying just 2 kilometres from the quake's epicentre, they checked their most recent pictures of the area. "We were pleasantly surprised when we were able to use the imagery to make a wicked cool observation of quake-induced change," says NASA glaciologist Kelly Brunt, who took the images.
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