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If you’ve been following the excellent David Attenborough documentary “Frozen Planet” you’ll already have a good idea of how beautiful but fragile our planet is at its frozen extremes. Here are 13 pictures that celebrate the most naturally artistic of glaciers.
1. Hypnotic Glacier
A mind bogglingly beautiful view of the inside of a glacier by photographer, Tyler Stableford. Genuinely dizzying.
2. Alien Landscape Glacier
Another bracingly beautiful view of a glacier, this time formed by snow that is over 1000 years old and metamorphosed into highly pressurised ice with almost no air bubbles. Breathtaking.
3. The Nimrod Glacier – Beauty from Above
This is a photo taken from space of the 84 mile long Nimrod Glacier. Despite looking like a fast flowing river, the ice moves at only 6 ½ feet per day.
4. Wedgemount Glacier
The scale of this isn’t clear, but bear in mind that the cave is roughly five-stories high. Another searing example of one of the most awe-inspiring phenomena the earth has to offer.
5. The Tearful Maiden
This picture was taken in the Svalbard archipelago, Norway. Some say it’s the Madonna, others swear its Michael Jackson. All we can say for sure is that it’s a huge coincidence and, surprisingly for a block of compact ice, quite moving. Captured by Michael Nolan.
6. Flowing Ice Magma
Another image where the sheer scale of the thing takes you aback. The Briksdalbreen Glacier, Norway, looks less like a natural phenomena than something cooked up by a Hollywood Studio. The jagged, beauty of the ice flow is heightened when you notice the tiny, tiny people at the end.
7. God’s Lego
A stunning scene from Antarctica, subsequently commandeered and turned into part of a now semi-famous Windows 7 theme. The teeny black spots are penguins playing among the enormous ice cliffs.
8. Sea of Blue Ice
This sea of thousand year old ice is so blue from having the oxygen squeezed out of it. This causes the ice crystals to become larger, which in turn means that more of the oxygen-hydrogen stretch bond is visible to the human eye. The oxygen-hydrogen bond absorbs light at the red end of the spectrum, which is why we see the blue so clearly.
9. Elephant Foot Glacier
A stunning aerial view of the Elephant Foot Glacier’ in Greenland. The mountains on either side are thousands of feet high, which gives some idea of the gargantuan scale. This kind of feature is best seen from the air.
10. Blue Ice
Another example of the amazing hue that ice takes on once the air bubbles have been squeezed out. The yellow of this boat in the Antarctic brings out the contrast even more starkly.
11. Kayaking at the End of the World
This is the biggest floating glacier on the face of the planet. Like an Andy Warhol take on the yellow brick road. A fissure caused by global warming runs down its centre into the distance. An example of where destruction is truly beautiful.
12. The Cat Glacier!
Glaciers. There’s majesty, there’s beauty, there’s awe, there’s immense scale and there’s thrilling scenes. This example is no exception: an enormous tower of ice and snow over a stunning overhang, gorgeous light-blue hues shown off by the ice just under the surface, an ice waterfall in the background and the very cute cat of course.
13. Giant Ice Phallus
While strictly speaking not a glacier, and some would argue not strictly speaking art, we nevertheless felt this warranted inclusion in our list. As well as being childishly amusing, it was actually part of a glacier, and therefore provokes some interesting debate regarding the effects of global warming.
