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Image of Arctic sea ice on September 12, 2008 when the sea ice reached the annual minimum extent of 4.52 sq km (1.74 sq miles), the second lowest extent recorded since 1979. The maximum extent, reached on March 10, was 15.21 million square kilometers (5.87 million square miles). This image of the Arctic was produced from sea ice observations collected by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) Instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, overlaid on the NASA Blue Marble Next Generation data. The image captures ice conditions at the end of the melt season. Sea ice (white, image center) stretches across the Arctic Ocean from Greenland (top right) to Russia, but large areas of open water were apparent as well.