Our GIS Intern, @a-efe.bsky.social, is finishing his 12-week internship at @bas.ac.uk today. We want to say a big thank you for his fantastic contributions during this time with MAGIC! Yesterday, Efe gave a final presentation to the team showcasing his work. 1/2

We are so pleased to announce the official launch of the new BAS Map Catalogue 🎉🗺 The catalogue contains open access topographic, thematic and geological maps, as well as full details on where to purchase our professionally printed published maps. Have a look for yourselves at bas.ac.uk/maps! 1/2

We're very happy to share that three of our maps received awards at the @bcsmaps.bsky.social Annual Conference last week! Our Alexander Island and Bedmap3 maps were recognised in the Printed Mapping category, and our Ice Logistics Portal (www.icelogistics.info) in the Electronic Mapping category 🏆🎉

We've recently been testing our new laser scanner, acquired this year to enable accurate scanning of our facilities. It’s capturing in 3D now! MAGIC supports BIM modelling in Antarctica, where buildings will be scanned into point clouds to record detailed features - not even a socket will be missed.

A couple of our team are attending the @bcsmaps.bsky.social 2025 annual conference taking place at @bgs.ac.uk today and yesterday. It has been a fascinating few days so far and it’s great to see our maps displayed for the awards ceremony later today! #carto2025

Our new Geomatics Surveyor in the team is attending Pre-Deployment Training this week as he will soon be travelling to Rothera Research Station, Antarctica! Everyone travelling to the Polar Regions with BAS must attend this vital training to make sure we are all safe when deployed. ⛑️❄️

Iceberg A23A is currently located north of South Georgia & over the weekend has fragmented into a several large pieces. While these individual icebergs are large & may get new names, they may be short lived as further breakup is now likely as currents push them all further north into warmer waters.

@bas.ac.uk hosts 'Pre-Deployment Training' each year, for those going to Antarctica. Everyone attending receives a couple of maps in their pack and we've been busy printing and collecting up these maps ready for the event! Nothing beats a map to help orient people for their exciting adventure ahead.

We're almost ready to formally launch our new Map Catalogue, containing a mixture of interesting & useful polar maps! 🗺️ Are there any small maps or graphics that you'd love to see available online? Any of your favourite locations that you've never managed to find a good map of? Let us know!

Same island, new map (and new discoveries!) 🗺️ The Mapping and Geographic Information Centre (@magic.bas.ac.uk) and Geology Team have produced new maps of Alexander Island in Antarctica – the first update in 40 years!

📢 New Map Alert 🗺️ We have produced new maps of Alexander Island, along with the geology team here at @bas.ac.uk! These 1:500 000 scale maps cover the second largest uninhabited island in the world at a level of detail never before seen. See the full story here: www.bas.ac.uk/media-post/t... 1/2

MAGIC was out test flying our eBee VISION platforms in advance of the upcoming Antarctic field season this week. The eBee VISION UAVs can fly for 90 minutes and operate up to 20 km from the pilot. Here's a short clip of one of them in action! 🛩️ 1/2

Come and join BAS, working with both MAGIC and the Wildlife from Space Team! We are looking for an expert in ecological remote sensing with experience of spectral analysis to support our Darwin Plus South Georgia Seabird project. 🐦🦤 bas.ciphr-irecruit.com/applicants/v...

Lots of dots! These are spot heights generated for our Air Operations Planning Maps, using REMAv2 2m tiles. Next steps are to clean up the density, add existing GPS points & then add them to our maps, which are used for planning by pilots across the continent. The data will then be openly published!

We are currently hosting an intern digitising ice floes from satellite radar (SAR) imagery in the Weddell Sea. The resulting labelled data will be used in the NERC DEFIANT and QUASAR projects to assess the performance of machine learning methods and quantify errors in sea ice concentration data.

We've been busy on a new project making polygon boundaries for place names, using Alexander Island as a case study. Creating polygons for Antarctic names is about more than cartographic precision. It’s about improving how we understand, search, & use data in one of Earth’s most remote environments.

We have been working along with engineers from Phase One and Rocky Mountain Aircraft over the past week to install and test our new Phase One PAS aerial camera into BAS's Twin Otter aircraft. 🛩️ 1/3

Did you know that it's possible to follow the RRS Sir David Attenborough on @bas.ac.uk's website? We provide the maps and location tracking to underpin this. 🚢🗺️ See the latest position of the ship here, on its way north after a long season in Antarctica! www.bas.ac.uk/polar-operat...

Our former head of MAGIC gave a joint talk at the South Georgia Association summer event today on 'Advances in Mapping South Georgia'. It was a fantastic overview on the island’s varied and interesting history. We’re proud to be continuing mapping work on the island in 2025!

This week we have been at a @polomints.bsky.social project meeting, planning details of how to use fixed stereo cameras, RPAS and our new air camera to monitor calving of the Sheldon Glacier on Adelaide Island. For more information visit polomints.ac.uk.

We are currently at the @esa.int Living Planet Symposium in Vienna #LPS25. It's a busy week hearing about the latest developments in Earth Observation, kicking off a new project and catching up with longtime collaborators.

We're hiring a GIS and Mapping Specialist to manage our Geospatial Helpdesk and to contribute to our Topographic Map Series. This is a really exciting opportunity at the British Antarctic Survey to support colleagues across the organisation. Details here: shorturl.at/bA4fd #GISjobs

We’re developing a prototype web portal to explore British Antarctic Survey’s aerial photography archive 📸 ✈ Search by place or flight line, view results on the map, and access decades of contextual survey data. A step toward making this unique Antarctic record more discoverable & easier to explore!

We've just received the proofs of our new Alexander Island map from Dennis Maps printers and have given the go ahead for printing! This is the first comprehensive map of the entire region produced in decades. At 1:500 000 scale, it also features a geological map on the reverse 😍 Watch this space!

Great to see our map used by UK Foreign Secretary Rt Hon David Lammy and Espen Barth Eide during their visit to the @ukarcticoffice.bsky.social in Ny-Ålesund recently. With summer/winter versions, it shows how fast the region changes and why frequent, detailed mapping in the Arctic is so important.

🐧📢 New paper alert 📢 🐧 This work was led and supported by the MAGIC team, using fifteen years of remote sensing data to analyse almost 250 satellite images. Read more in BAS's full thread below.

The newly released NERC 'Forward Look for Environmental Science' highlights Polar View (www.polarview.aq) as a vital service helping users navigate safely & efficiently in the polar regions. We've been developing Polar View for 20 years now & love hearing from all sorts of users. shorturl.at/veId0

The NERC Arctic Office have printed a giant version of our main published Arctic map and it's come out beautifully! We can't wait to see this being used at upcoming events. Who doesn't want a huge 3 metre map?!

A few of our team members are attending GEO Business in London today. There have been fascinating insights into the future of geospatial and we're enjoying talking to other experts in the field! #GEOBusiness2025 #Geospatial

A few months ago, we surveyed Rothera Point using our fixed-wing eBee-X UAV. We've now processed the data and produced this beautiful, orthorectified mosaic, as well as a Digital Elevation Model. We carry out these surveys every year, allowing all of BAS to work with current and accurate data!

We're proud to share that our Bedmap3 map won "Best Map" at the International Map Industry Association (IMIA) forum in London last week! 🏆 This international award celebrates Outstanding Cartographic Design & we’re honoured to be recognised alongside leading names in the field from previous years. 🗺️

We're proud to share that our Bedmap3 map won "Best Map" at the International Map Industry Association (IMIA) forum in London last week! 🏆 This international award celebrates Outstanding Cartographic Design & we’re honoured to be recognised alongside leading names in the field from previous years. 🗺️

It has been a busy week for conferences this week! One of our GIS Specialists presented at the IMIA Mapping Leaders Forum in London yesterday. It has been a useful few days talking to some world-leading map publishers and printers and we’ve gained lots of ideas on how we can do more with our maps!

Some of the MAGIC team are at Esri UK Annual Conference today in London. Give us a shout if you want to chat to us 👋

Did you know the scientists who discovered the ozone hole have places named after them in Antarctica? Farman, Gardiner & Shanklin’s 1985 discovery led to the Montreal Protocol—and now their names live on in a highland, glacier, and islands. Learn more here: apc.antarctica.ac.uk

If you are at #EGU25 this week, there are a lot of people from BAS to say hello to. 👋 Come and check out our poster, presenting an update to Antarctic rock outcrop, at X5. The data has been extracted from Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery & provides a much needed update in terms of accuracy & currency!

📢 We're hiring a GIS Specialist to support the Antarctic Infrastructure Modernisation Programme. This is a really exciting opportunity at the British Antarctic Survey for someone to help us integrate GIS and BIM for infrastructure projects in Antarctica. Details here: shorturl.at/Mf983

We have recently added the newly published Bedmap3 data to ArcGIS Online, ensuring that the three main datasets (bed, surface and ice thickness) are easy to access! They are styled using the beautiful colour ramps from the paper and map 🎨 Check them out from here: arcgis.com/home/item.ht...

You might have spotted oval symbols on sea ice charts. They’re not Easter eggs 🐣 — but they 𝘥𝘰 contain something inside: a compact summary of ice concentration, thickness, and floe size.

The cracks are starting to show in iceberg A23a. It has been stuck on the continental shelf near South Georgia since early March, but has now lost a first significant chunk measuring approximately 18 by 8 km. Given its dimensions, this should now be A23c. Satellite imagery from NASA MODIS. 🛰️

📢 We are looking for a Geomatics Surveyor to join our team at the British Antarctic Survey. 📢 Are you a surveyor with experience of collecting & managing geospatial survey data? Would you like to get the opportunity to work at Rothera Research Station? Apply today! Details here: shorturl.at/RwAZV

🎉 Imagery from the newly launched Sentinel-1C Copernicus satellite is now accessible via Polar View www.polarview.aq and the Ice Logistics Portal www.icelogistics.info/antarctic?ce...! This addition significantly increases the repeatability of SAR observations in the Polar Regions 🛰️

Busy week for us in MAGIC! We've been preparing papers and maps for the upcoming Antarctic Place-names Committee meeting. We manage the British Antarctic Territory and South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands gazetteers for the FCDO - learn more here: apc.antarctica.ac.uk

Did you know that some of our key Antarctic topographic data is in Esri's Living Atlas? We regularly update these services so that your maps will always show the latest authoritative data! livingatlas.arcgis.com/en/browse/?q... For more info: www.bas.ac.uk/media-post/b...

Did you see the news about the release of Bedmap3? This fascinating dataset reveals the hidden surface beneath Antarctica's ice. ❄️ MAGIC has produced a double-sided printed map of the data, with a beautiful representation of the topography, and features including place names and subglacial lakes.🗺️

We’ve just published the most detailed map yet of the landscape beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet (called Bedmap3), and we learnt some pretty cool facts about Antarctica that you can use to impress your pals. Ready? Graphic: Hamish Pritchard et al

We've been working with this beautiful Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery this week, showing South Georgia in all its glory in Feb. 2018. The sediment plumes are clearly highlighted here and it is extremely rare to get an almost cloud-free image of the whole island 🏔️😍

The last Twin Otter aircraft has just left Rothera which marks the end of the field season, and gives us a chance to look back at the support we have provided over the year. We started with fieldwork and air unit maps! 🧵 1/5

The world's largest iceberg, A23a, appears to have grounded close to South Georgia. We've been monitoring and mapping this berg for many years now and we're watching closely to see what it might do next! These maps show its route since 1986 and the latest position to the SW of South Georgia ❄️🐧 1/3

MAGIC staff are currently deployed at Rothera Research Station, Antarctica. While on site they are undertaking a series of surveys around the local area, including a minimum snow cover survey of the station and monitoring the retreat of the ice ramp that links the station to Adelaide Island.