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| - Fact Check: Is this Antarctica as seen from space? Not really
Recently, scientists have warned of the rapid melting of Antarctica's Thwaites glacier - also known as "Doomsday glacier" for its collapse could submerge many coastal cities worldwide. Amid this, a purported view of Antarctica from space is being widely shared on social media.
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India Today Fact Check
This is a computer-generated image from September 2005 showing a view of the Antarctic region.
Recently, scientists have warned of the rapid melting of Antarctica's Thwaites glacier - also known as "Doomsday glacier" for its collapse could submerge many coastal cities worldwide. Amid this, a purported view of Antarctica from space is being widely shared on social media.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim along with the picture to be misleading. This is actually a computer-generated image of the Earth with full view of the Antarctic region.
The post is viral on Facebook and Twitter. The archived version can be seen here.
AFWA probe
We found that this picture was not taken from space. Rather, it is a computer-generated image showing the Antarctic region. We got the initial hint about this from the comment section of the post where some people questioned its authenticity. A user had commented that it was an artist's rendering, and not an actual photograph.
We then conducted a reverse image search. This led us to a Pinterest post with the title "Antarctica Visualization Wallpaper". With the help of keyword search, we found this image was created by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio.
The"Scientific Visualization Studio" works with NASA's scientists to create visualisations, animations and images. Its purpose is to promote a better understanding of the Earth and space research activities at NASA.
We found that in 2007, on the occasion of International Polar Year, the "Scientific Visualization Studio" had released some visualizations of the space view of Arctic and Antarctic on September 21, 2005. These visualizations were created by data visualiser Cindy Starr.
Last year, the same picture went viral with the claim that it is part of the first photos taken by the ISRO's lunar mission Chandrayaan-2. At that time too, several websites had debunked it.
Therefore, we can say that the viral picture is not of Antarctica as seen from space, but a computer-generated image created by NASA's "Scientific Visualization Studio".
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