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Modern maritime charts still contain errors similar to the one that let the
crew from the infamous mutiny on the Bounty live undiscovered for 18 years on
the Pitcairn Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Contemporary charts misplaced the
mutineers’ location by 300 kilometres. Now a satellite has revealed that another
atoll in the Pacific chain is still plotted inaccurately. When the commercial
satellite Ikonos was programmed to photograph Ducie Atoll, only half of the
70-hectare islet could be seen. Jerry Arp, technical support manager at Space
Imaging of Denver, Colorado, checked the satellite’s timing system, found it was
fine and deduced that the charts must be wrong.