Earth from space: Iconic 'Star Trek' symbol shines brightly in sea of muddy Arctic sea ice

This 2012 satellite image captured an unusual snow-topped structure located among a sea of dirty, fracturing sea ice in northern Canada. The curved white hook resembles the rounded, arrowhead-shape badges pinned to the uniforms of fictional Starfleet officers, such as James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard, in the iconic "Star Trek" franchise.

The satellite spotted the quirky feature in Foxe Basin — a shallow, 316,000-square-mile (819,000 square kilometers) body of water north of Hudson Bay. The structure is draped around a group of tiny, rocky islands, known as the Manning Islands.

The icy arrowhead "was probably caused by snow getting trapped in rough, ridged ice that formed as it ran up against the Manning Islands," Nathan Kurtz, chief scientist of the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, told NASA's Earth Observatory in 2014. The 1.5-mile-wide (2.5 km) patch appeared to be multi-year sea ice, meaning it was made up of ice dating back several years, he added.

During the summer, when this photo was taken, Arctic sea ice begins to melt and break apart into thousands of smaller fragments that eventually break away and melt completely. In this case, a majority of those fragments had a muddy brown color, which was a result of staining from sediment that got dragged up from the seafloor, according to Earth Observatory.

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Some of the larger fragments of ice in the photo are peppered with small blue dots. These are melt ponds, which are shallow puddles of water that form on the surface of the ice as it melts.

The waters surrounding these sea ice fragments are rich in phytoplankton, which makes them a hotspot for a wide variety of marine Animals including Arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea), seals, walruses (Odobenus rosmarus), polar bears (Ursus maritimus), narwhals (Monodon monoceros) and beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas).