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by Christoph Hormann
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The Musaicum North Atlantic Islands

Musaicum North Atlantic Islands satellite image mosaic

The Musaicum North Atlantic Islands is a regional visible color satellite image mosaic of Iceland, Jan Mayen and the Faroe Islands with a ground resolution of 10m. It combines recent Sentinel-2 satellite imagery into the highest quality and most cloud free depiction of the region in this resolution class available today.

It is generated using a classical mosaicing process derived from the methods and techniques developed for local mosaics but with a high degree of automatization. This eliminates most of the time intensive manual steps while maintaining high quality standards.

Compared to the Green Marble the Musaicum North Atlantic Islands offers much higher spatial resolution (10m compared to 250/300m) at the cost of slightly more heterogeneous coloring due to the smaller data basis. Cloud occurrence is comparable to my hand produced local mosaics with less than about one in 100k pixels significantly affected by clouds.

Compared to the Musaicum EU-Plus this mosaic is based on improved aggregation techniques with in particular more reliable coud detection and better color calibration.

Primary data source for the image is Sentinel-2 imagery from 2019 to 2024, in small parts also from 2017 and 2018.

Key properties

  • Visible color mosaic of Iceland, Jan Mayen and the Faroe Islands
  • 10m base resolution
  • Based on Sentinel-2 data from 2017 to 2024
  • Includes full coverage of lakes and coastal waters, no coverage of the open ocean
  • Shows atmosphere compensated surface color, available either as linear surface reflectance values or tone mapped for direct display
  • Available with illumination as recorded and with shading compensation

Product packaging

The mosaic is produced in different projections for different parts of the coverage area and is assembled in the target projection on demand. The previews of the whole mosaic shown here are in UTM zone 28 projection. For use in web maps in Mercator projection by default a z13 grid (19.1m nominal resolution, less than 10m de facto ground resolution at latitudes of more than 60 degrees) is provided.

The standard form of distribution of this mosaic is with an alpha channel for seamless blending with a background image for the open ocean - like the Green Marble. This is illustrated in the samples below. Other variants can be produced on request.

Musaicum North Atlantic Islands with transparent oceans and alpha channel for seamless blending Musaicum North Atlantic Islands blended with Green Marble based Ocean coloring Musaicum North Atlantic Islands with transparent oceans and alpha channel for seamless blending (detail) Musaicum North Atlantic Islands blended with Green Marble based Ocean coloring (detail)

Product options

In addition to the mosaic with illumination as recorded - which is the recommended version for direct visual applications - this mosaic is also available in a shading compensated version where the differences in illumination due to the topography and shadows cast by mountains are compensated for. This version can be used for example in applications where a synthetic illumination is used to generate a custom shading effect.

Supplementary to the visual color mosaic a vegetation data set is available with the same coverage and source data, documenting the fractional herbaceous and woody vegetation as well as fractional water cover for every 10m pixel.

Musaicum North Atlantic Islands detail with shading as recorded Musaicum North Atlantic Islands detail with shading compensation Musaicum North Atlantic Islands vegetation map visualization

Sample gallery

Musaicum North Atlantic Islands sample: Faroe Islands Musaicum North Atlantic Islands sample: Reykjavik, Iceland Musaicum North Atlantic Islands sample: Bjargtangar, Iceland Musaicum North Atlantic Islands sample: Djúpivogur, Iceland Musaicum North Atlantic Islands sample: Djúpivogur, Iceland - with shading compensation Musaicum North Atlantic Islands sample: Öræfajökull, Iceland Musaicum North Atlantic Islands sample: Öræfajökull, Iceland - with shading compensation Musaicum North Atlantic Islands sample: west of Langjökull, Iceland Musaicum North Atlantic Islands sample: vegetation data in area west of Langjökull, Iceland

Musaicum North Atlantic Islands license inquiry

You can use this form to make your inquiry. If you prefer you can also make your inquiry via email of course, at your option also with encryption).

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What you are interested in

Tone mapped image mosaic with default tone mapping and alpha channel for seamless ocean blending
Mosaic with shading compensation
Linear surface reflectance data for custom processing
Vegetation map

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Todays featured image:

The Dolomites near Cortina d’Ampezzo
The Dolomites near Cortina d’Ampezzo
View of the Dolomites near Cortina d’Ampezzo towards the northwest. Uses data copyright OpenStreetMap contributors and elevation data from Land... [more]
Design and Content Copyright 2025 by Christoph Hormann
last updated Fri, 14 Mar 2025 20:27