It’s easy not to instantly recognize what the picture above shows. It appears to depict a distorted hummingbird-style shape, but it’s actually a stream of ice moving slowly around a mountain in East Antarctica from above.

The image was captured by a satellite program that launched last year as a partnership between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).The satellite is the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) model, the first to have two Synthetic Aperture Radars (SARs) on board, operating at two different wavelengths: the L-band and the S-band.

This gives the satellite the ability to track both coarser topological features to greater depths (the longer L-band), and finer features on the surface (the shorter S-band). As a result, we now get higher-resolution images of glaciers, earthquakes, forests, and landslides than ever before. At 39 feet wide, the combined radar antenna reflector is the largest NASA has ever sent into space.

The green, magenta, and white coloring isn’t from differing wavelengths though, as everything in this shot was captured on the L-band. Rather, the colors show variations in polarization: the direction at which the radar signals return to NISAR.

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Horizontal signals appear magenta, and likely bounced off smooth ice. Vertical signals, scattered by irregular surfaces at deeper levels, are green and represent deeper crevasses. The white areas are where horizontal and vertical signals are balanced, so a combination of the two readings.

All of which is to say, the “hummingbird” is actually ice splitting and fracturing as it goes around the Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja mountaintop, like a stream flows around a boulder (only at a much slower speed). These nunataks are common in Antarctica and Greenland, standing resolutely in place as the ice shifts around them.

A purely optical shot of the same area, in contrast, would be almost completely white, with only slight variations in color hinting at what’s underneath.

“First, it’s a beautiful image, with rich details of features that provide insights to how the glacier is moving,” said NASA signal analysis engineer Seongsu Jeong in a statement. “Then, because radar can often see through snow and deep into the ice, NISAR can observe fundamentally different properties of Antarctic ice than can be seen in optical imagery. With NISAR we’re seeing what’s hidden beneath the surface.”

NISAR has been up and operational for about a year now, and it will continue to gather dozens of terabytes of data a day, across the whole globe—effectively scanning the planet twice every 12 days. The public can check the data out online. As well as probing ice sheets, the satellite will also be monitoring disaster zones and ecosystem change, at a greater level of detail than ever before.

And so, we can expect many more images that aren’t what they seem in the coming years.

Lead image: NASA/JPL/Caltech