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OK, I sent those Antarctica coordinates to a friend who does exactly what Google Earth does, satellite mapping. Here is what he said:

I assume you're looking at GoogleEarth? All of the landmasses displayed on the earth are pieced together imagery. Most have been taken from satellite but some is aerial imagery taken from a plane. Satellite imagery is obtained in strips as the sensors are opened and exposed over time, kind of like a flatbed scanner. Imagery satellites fly in orbits from North to South at an angle that keeps the sun at about the 10 am position throughout its' entire journey south. It returns North on the dark side of the earth. The orbit constantly progresses Westward keeping the sun at the 10 am position. Each full orbit around the earth takes just 90 minutes, so that satellite is really moving. The strips are visible on all continents once you've zoomed out to 400 miles or so (bottom right in GoogleEarth). The oceans are just colorized elevation models representing the ocean floor. To answer your question specifically, those areas you pointed to are mosaiced imagery. The first one is probably nothing more than the tops of clouds and then a computer tried to color balance it and really ruined the edges - making them darker. The second is definitely looking all the way to the ground. Collecting imagery from the poles is the most difficult because the satellite only has a couple of months a year where the sun has any useful angle for imagery. I wouldn't be surprised if 90+% of the imagery of Antarctica is just cloud cover.

Spoil sport! It sure was fun imagining all the mysterious possibilities!