{"id":227,"date":"2020-11-18T08:18:50","date_gmt":"2020-11-18T07:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/spotting_penguin_poo_from_space\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T00:25:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T22:25:45","slug":"spotting_penguin_poo_from_space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/spotting_penguin_poo_from_space\/","title":{"rendered":"At f\u00e5 \u00f8je p\u00e5 pingvinlort fra rummet"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"lede\">\n<p>What kind of things do we use satellites for? Most people think of observing the weather and communicating around the world\u2026 but what about spotting penguin poo?! It sounds like a joke, but this is exactly what scientists have been doing!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" data-width=\"5000\" data-credit=\"ESA\/ATG medialab\" data-detail-url=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Images\/2015\/06\/Sentinel-2_monitoring_changing_lands\" data-licence=\"ESA Standard Licence\" data-licence-url=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Terms_and_conditions_of_use_of_images_and_videos_available_on_the_esa_website\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2015\/06\/sentinel-2_monitoring_changing_lands\/15416933-1-eng-GB\/Sentinel-2_monitoring_changing_lands.jpg\" alt=\"Sentinel-2: monitoring changing lands\"><figcaption>Sentinel-2: monitoring changing lands<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Emperor penguins are only found in Antarctica. They are vulnerable to climate change, as warming ocean waters melt the sea ice where they live and breed. So, it is important that we can track how many groups of penguins \u2013 called <i>colonies<\/i> \u2013 there are. This is difficult, as the areas in which they live are remote, and temperatures dip to a bitterly cold \u201350\u00b0C, making it hard for scientists to visit. Could finding them from space be the answer?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Individual penguins are too small to show up in satellite images, but photos taken by Sentinel-2A and 2B, which are orbiting Earth, have revealed large brown patches of ice in areas around Antarctica. Scientists realised that this is where the ice has been stained by penguin poo (the official name of which is <i>guano<\/i>)!<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" data-width=\"1280\" data-credit=\"contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA\" data-detail-url=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Images\/2020\/07\/Cape_Gates_Antarctica\" data-licence=\"CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence\" data-licence-url=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Terms_and_conditions_of_use_of_images_and_videos_available_on_the_esa_website\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2020\/07\/cape_gates_antarctica\/22158812-1-eng-GB\/Cape_Gates_Antarctica.jpg\" alt=\"Can you see the brown patches? They are giant stains on the ice caused by penguin poo! Copyright: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO\"><figcaption>Can you see the brown patches? They are giant stains on the ice caused by penguin poo! Copyright: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Many of these brown patches matched up with penguin colonies we already knew about, but this poo-spotting technique has revealed 11 new colonies! We now know of 61 penguin colonies around Antarctica. These new colonies bring the known number of Emperor penguins to just over half a million, boosting the total by up to 10%.<\/p>\n<p>While this is a fantastic finding, it is not all good news. These penguins are living in areas likely to be affected by climate change, meaning we need to watch them closely and do all we can to protect them. Sentinel-2A and 2B are perfect for this job, as their mission is to observe the health and behaviour of our planet \u2013 and how it is continuously affected by climate change.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" data-width=\"2395\" data-credit=\"BAS\/ESA\" data-detail-url=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Images\/2020\/07\/Locations_of_penguin_colonies\" data-licence=\"ESA Standard Licence and Additional permission may be required\" data-licence-url=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Terms_and_conditions_of_use_of_images_and_videos_available_on_the_esa_website\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2020\/07\/locations_of_penguin_colonies\/22158771-1-eng-GB\/Locations_of_penguin_colonies.jpg\" alt=\"Locations of penguin colonies\"><figcaption>Locations of penguin colonies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><i>Cool fact: Scientists were surprised to find that some of the new colonies live on sea ice formed around icebergs grounded in shallow water \u2013 behaviour not seen before in Emperor penguins! <\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What kind of things do we use satellites for? Most people think of observing the weather and communicating around the world\u2026 but what about spotting penguin poo?! It sounds like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"esa_banner_image":"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2020\/07\/emperor_penguins\/22158494-1-eng-GB\/Emperor_penguins.jpg","esa_banner_description":"Emperor penguins","esa_banner_credit":"BAS","esa_banner_licence":"ESA Standard Licence and Additional permission may be required","esa_banner_detail_url":"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Images\/2020\/07\/Emperor_penguins","esa_external_url":"","esa_external_new_window":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":true},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"panel":[],"language":[],"age":[],"duration":[],"resource_type":[],"audience":[],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4365,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions\/4365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"panel","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/panel?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"age","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/age?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"duration","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/duration?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"resource_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource_type?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/audience?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}