ICESat-2 Photon Cloud Chart and Locator Map (IMAGE)

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

ICESat-2 Photon Cloud Chart and Locator Map

Caption

A visualization of ICESat-2 data, called a photon cloud, shows the first set of height measurements from the satellite, taken as it orbited over the Antarctic ice sheet. Each blue dot represents a photon detected by the ATLAS instrument. This photon cloud shows the elevation measured by photons in the middle of the ice sheet, following along 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) of the satellite's ground track, from left to right. The speckled dots are background photons from sunlight, but the thick blue line is actually a concentration of dots that represent laser photons that returned to the ICESat-2 satellite.

Credit

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

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