View from space of the northeastern tip of Urup Island, one of the many islands in the Kuril chain, which extends from northern Japan to the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia. Sea ice that formed to the north in the Sea of Okhotsk has been piled up against the islands by prevailing northwesterly winds, forming an irregular mass connecting the islands (image center). Smaller ice floes are breaking off from the main ice mass at gaps between the islands and forming fingerlike projections of ice fragments that extend to the southeast (image lower right).