Space
NASA pulls photo after admitting the horizon “came out a bit curved because of the lens”
The agency says the correction is routine. It has not said what the horizon looks like uncorrected.
Cartographer loses his bearings, finds the Edge
After eleven weeks sailing in a straight line, Tobias Renn says he reached “a wall of ice with a handrail on it”. The agency responsible has not commented on the handrail.
Field desk
Tobias Renn left the port of Vigo on 12 May with a compass he refuses to describe, four months of tinned food and a single instruction to his crew: do not turn.
Eleven weeks later the Rasa struck something. Renn’s logbook, entry 87, records it in four words: “Ice. Very tall. Railing.”
A wall nobody had booked
The crew spent two days sailing along the barrier without finding an end to it. Renn measured its height by eye at “about a cathedral”, a unit he defends as more honest than metres because, he says, everyone has stood next to a cathedral and nobody has stood next to a metre.
The handrail runs along the top. It is continuous, painted, and — according to Renn — warm to look at.
You do not put a handrail on something people cannot fall off
— Tobias Renn, master of the Rasa
The agency stays quiet
The Antarctic Treaty Secretariat was asked three times whether it maintains a handrail at 78 degrees south. It replied twice, both times about penguins.
Renn plans to return in September with a longer ladder and a lawyer.