These pictures of a flipped iceberg are simply stunning

San Francisco based photographerAlex Cornell captured these incredible images of a flipped iceberg when he travelled to Antarctica last month.

Icebergs flip over if the ocean melts away part of them, leading to an imbalance. A flipped iceberg is such a stunning colour because ice naturally absorbs red light, and reflects blue.

Mr Cornell told i100.co.uk the iceberg looked "more like a galactic artefact than anything terrestrial."

"These shots were taken at water level from a little Zodiac cruiser. Most likely, this was a very old glacier — the blue basically being the glacial equivalent of ageing white hairs," he said.

Hugh Corr, a glacial geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey told i100.co.uk he had rarely seen an image of a flipped iceberg that was so beautiful. "I suspect it's legitimate - the colours may have been enhanced in some way," he said. "This isn't a big iceberg, it's hard to tell its scale. I suspect it's reasonably small, we're not talking about the 6, 7, 8 miles long ones. The bigger they are the further out into the ocean they go. "

He said the process of an iceberg flipping can be very dangerous and create tsunamis, but added: "Watching icebergs roll over is one of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring things I've ever seen."

All pictures: copyright Alex Cornell

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