Researchers at NASA have discovered a rare find in the Caspian Sea -- an ice island that looks like a gigantic floating diamond.
The giant ice diamond was spotted by the Landsat 8 satellite on Feb. 4 near western Kazahkstan. The said island is, in fact, made of different types of ice that form at sea.
Onlookers can marvel at the diamond ice's sheer beauty as its natural white color opposes that of the surrounding landscape. Apart from white ice, the ice island also features brown ice from the Volga Delta, where Europe's Volga River meets the Caspian Sea.
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According to Weather, the "island" comes from the cold northern region of the Caspian Sea. The Caspian Sea is the largest body of water that is inland and is attached to Kazakhstan and Iran.
Alexei Kouraev from the Laboratory of Geophysical and Oceanographic Studies in France told NASA that the ice "diamond" may be a piece of ice island that detached itself from the ice field a bit far away. IFL Science notes that it's a common misconception to treat this as an iceberg. It is safer to assume that this ice "island" is from a larger sea ice and then found itself on the Caspian Sea.
NASA has also released a thermal data-based image of the diamond ice island. This is a rare find for those visiting the Caspian sea as it is not too often for scientists to discover a sheet ice in this scale.
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