The newly discovered colony, announced to mark Penguin Awareness Day, brings the total number of known emperor penguin breeding sites around the coastline of Antarctica to 66 - half of which were discovered by space satellites

The colony is located at Verleger Point, West Antarctica, at 74° 42’ S, 136° 11’W, and has around 500 birds.

The site was identified thanks to penguin guano stains visible in images from the European Commission’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite mission. These were then compared to high-resolution images from the MAXAR WorldView3 satellite for confirmation. 

A new emperor penguin colony has been discovered in Antarctica using satellite mapping technology

Image credit: MAXAR Technologies 2023/BAS

Emperor penguins are the biggest of the 18 penguin species...