NASA satellite images reveal skull-like formation on Antarctic island as glaciers retreat
Vega Island in Antarctica's Weddell Sea bears a striking resemblance to a human skull in satellite imagery, NASA said. Images captured by the Operational Land Imager aboard Landsat 9 in March 2025 and October 2026 show the island's glacier features forming a configuration that appears to depict a grinning face looking toward nearby Devil Island.
The formation's features include a rocky peak resembling an eye socket, a lateral moraine – a ridge of debris deposited by a glacier – forming the mouth, and the Bahía del Diablo Glacier completing the jawbone. In the March 2025 image, the island is largely covered in snow. By October 2026, extensive patches of darker, exposed glacier ice are visible, contrasting with the earlier image.
Glaciologist Mauri Pelto of Nichols College attributed the exposed ice to above-average temperatures during the Antarctic winter, particularly in June 2026. Limited snowfall, strong winds and sublimation – the process by which ice turns directly into water vapor – also contributed to the conditions.
"The winter season was no treat for these glaciers," Pelto said.
Scientists warn that darker ice absorbs more solar energy than snow, potentially accelerating melting as temperatures rise during the approaching Antarctic summer. Even a thin cover of new snow from a spring storm would be helpful in the short run, Pelto explained. When entombed in snow and ice, the skull is preserved. But when exposed to melt, it weathers away, which will lead to a changing jawline and expanding eye socket.
NASA said scientists first comprehensively mapped Vega Island's ice using early Landsat observations, aerial photographs and topographical maps. A 1982 study identified 29 glaciers across the island, including Devil's Bay Glacier, which researchers have monitored since the 1998–1999 Antarctic summer. Measurements have documented an overall decline in the glacier's mass, while satellite observations show ice loss and increasingly exposed bedrock elsewhere on the island.
Vega Island also holds historical significance. During the Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901–1903, two stranded exploration groups reunited at Cape Well-met before an Argentine expedition rescued the survivors.
The imagery underscores ongoing changes to Antarctica's glacier systems and the ways in which warming trends are reshaping the continent's frozen landscapes.
