NASA Satellite Captures ‘Hummingbird’ Shape Hidden in Antarctic Ice

This hummingbird shape in a NASAR satellite image is actually a mountaintop Antarctica. | Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A NASA satellite has captured a striking image of a fractured Antarctic landscape that appears to resemble a hummingbird.

According to NASA, teams in the United States and India collected data from two powerful radar instruments aboard the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite, revealing a fractured, barren Antarctic landscape in stunning detail.

The satellite image, released on Tuesday, shows glacier data that appears to form the shape of a small purple bird.
Despite its otherworldly quality, the Antarctic image shows a very real geographical feature called Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja, a mountaintop in East Antarctica, poking out amid a stream of ice flowing northeast to the ocean. As the moving glacier passes the obstruction, the mountain’s topography causes stresses in the ice, heavily fracturing the surrounding surfaces with deep cracks, called crevasses, which show as sharp green lines in the image. The image has been nicknamed “the hummingbird” by NISAR scientists.

The feature that resembles a bird’s tail is actually a glacier extending northeast toward the ocean, while the “feathers” spreading from the peak are deep cracks in the ice and rock known as crevasses. These fractures form as the glacier moves downhill, causing the mountain’s surface to split as the ice slowly flows toward the sea.

The NASA radar image shows a ‘hummingbird’ shape created by a mountain peak and fractured Antarctic ice | Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The image was created using data from the Earth-orbiting U.S.-India NISAR satellite’s L-band radar system. It shows Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja rising above a stream of ice flowing northeast toward the ocean.

Generated using measurements collected by NISAR’s L-band instrument in August 2025, while U.S. and Indian mission teams were testing the satellite’s systems, the “hummingbird” image highlights the mission’s ability to produce highly detailed radar imagery that reveals features of Earth’s surface.

“First, it’s a beautiful image, with rich details of features that provide insights to how the glacier is moving. Then, because radar can often see through snow and deep into the ice, NISAR can observe fundamentally different properties of Antarctic ice than can be seen in optical imagery,” Seongsu Jeong, the signal analysis engineer who produced the image at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, says in a statement. “With NISAR we’re seeing what’s hidden beneath the surface.”