Images of (lots of) the Arctic, Looking for sources Options

[elakdawalla]

I'm trying to find something that may not exist, but figured it wouldn't hurt to ask here for help. I'm looking for a nice-looking satellite image(s) (optical or radar) that show the current extent of Arctic sea ice. The Arctic is a problem because of its polar location -- the geosynchronous satellites that give us whole-Earth views get only a severely foreshortened view of the poles, so they're not a good source. There are polar-orbiting satellites but they're much closer so you need a mosaic; and the pole being icy and oceany, it's pretty cloudy a lot of the time. There's a pretty great Envisat radar data set including this fascinating release from just a couple days ago, but as cool (and sobering) as those images are, they're not very aesthetically pretty. Does anyone know of anything prettier out there?

--Emily