📄Handouts → 🧊Antarctic Research Images Gallery
Years 9–10+ Pūtaiao / Science

Antarctic science • Image evidence • Source literacy

Antarctic Research Images Gallery

This gallery keeps research images with the organisations that hold their provenance. Instead of copying anonymous pictures into Te Kete Ako, use the authoritative collections below, capture the image’s source details, and analyse what the image actually supports.

Why the images stay at source

Scientific images are evidence only when their context survives: creator or instrument, date, location, caption, processing and usage conditions. Copying an image without those details can turn evidence into decoration. Open an authoritative collection, choose an image, and bring its provenance record into your analysis.

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Antarctica New Zealand — research photography

Use this collection for field science, people working in Antarctica, stations, wildlife, landscapes and research activity connected to New Zealand’s Antarctic programme.

Best question: What research practice or environmental condition is visible, and what does the caption add that the pixels cannot?

Open Antarctica NZ photo library ↗
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NASA Earth Observatory — satellite views

Use satellite imagery to examine sea ice, ice shelves, glaciers, cloud, ocean colour and large-scale change. Earth-observation images often combine sensors or processing that must be read from the caption.

Best question: Is this true-colour photography, a data visualisation, or a processed composite—and why does that matter?

Open NASA Antarctica imagery ↗
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Field evidence

Choose an image where a researcher is sampling, measuring, drilling, surveying or deploying an instrument. Identify what is being measured and what additional metadata would be required to use the image as scientific evidence.

Do not assume: a photograph of research activity tells you the result of that research.

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Change over space or time

Choose two images of the same named place or phenomenon only when the source confirms the dates/locations are comparable. Then distinguish visible change from your explanation of its cause.

Do not assume: two dramatic images form a valid before-and-after pair.

Image evidence chain

1. Observe
What is directly visible?
2. Source
Who/what captured it, when and where?
3. Interpret
What scientific process is consistent with the evidence?
4. Limit
What can this image not establish by itself?

Research image record

Complete one record for each image you use.

Image title / source caption:

Source organisation:

Creator / instrument (if given):

Date captured / published:

Named location / spatial scale:

Original source URL:

What I can directly observe:

What the source caption/data adds:

My scientific interpretation:

One limitation / thing this image cannot prove:

Compare two images without overclaiming

QuestionImage AImage B
Same location / phenomenon?
Date / season / scale comparable?
What visibly differs?
What source metadata differs?
What explanation is supported?
What alternative explanation remains?

Four gallery challenges

  1. Research in action: Find an Antarctica NZ image showing a measurement or sampling activity. What could the instrument measure? What result is not visible?
  2. Satellite literacy: Find a NASA Antarctic image. Read the full caption and identify the sensor/platform and whether colour is natural or processed.
  3. Scale: Compare a field photograph with a satellite view. What question can each scale answer better?
  4. Claim audit: Write a dramatic claim someone could wrongly infer from one image. Then repair it so the wording matches the evidence.

Kaiako source notes