Pictured: Stunning photos of the Titanic

The sinking of the Titanic is one of the 20th century's great dramas, a mystery that has confounded scientists and historians for decades. There is still an aura of mysticism that remains around that fateful ship and new photos that will be published in the April 2012 edition of National Geographic Magazine provides for the first time a sense of what the wreck looks like today.

These new photographs, shot using state-of-the-art technology by independent research group Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, provide a greater understanding of what happened on that fateful April 15, 1912.
These photos are the by-product of a multi-million dollar, two-month expedition that used a number of different approaches to get never-before-seen views of the wrecked ship.

For much of August and September 2010, explorers from the Woods Hole Oceanic Institution used robotic vehicles to collect images during programmed sweeps of the surrounding areas.
Side-scan and multibeam sonar was used to store the minute details of the ship and to evaluate what has changed since previous exploratory expeditions.

During these sweeps, the robots stored 'ribbons' of data, with the products of the repeated attempts then collected together and observed as a whole unit.
The process, which is referred to as 'mowing the lawn', worked over the entire area of the ship and the surrounding seabed.

In total, the area in question measures three miles by five miles.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been studying the wreck for decades, and one of their lead archaeologists spoke to The National Geographic to explain the significance of the technology used to capture these images.

'This is a game-changer,' James Delgado told the magazine.
'In the past, trying to understand Titanic was like trying to understand Manhattan at midnight in a rainstorm—with a flashlight.

'Now we have a site that can be understood and measured, with definite things to tell us. In years to come this historic map may give voice to those people who were silenced, seemingly forever, when the cold water closed over them.'

The Titanic wreck has been one of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's most significant projects, with one of the groups' members having been a part of the original exhibition that discovered it back in 1985.

The discovery of the wreck, by WHOI, sparked an international interest in deep sea exploration.






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