The Aurora Australis above the South Pole Telescope at Amundsen-Scott Station, Antarctica.
Photography by Keith Vanderlinde and Calee Allen, National Science Foundation / U.S. Antarctic Program. Via Sci-Fi-O-Rama.
The Aurora Australis above the South Pole Telescope at Amundsen-Scott Station, Antarctica.
Photography by Keith Vanderlinde and Calee Allen, National Science Foundation / U.S. Antarctic Program. Via Sci-Fi-O-Rama.
Lovely.
It’d be worth wrapping up warm to watch that.
My understanding is that the structures are up on stilts to delay their inevitable interment under ice and snow.
My wife and I drove from Edmonton to San Diego in 2000. When we reached the near edge of the Canadian Rockies after setting out the first day, it was late at night. We got out of the car and looked at the sky. The Milky Way was quite visible. She had never seen it before. I think many people haven’t.
You have to get away from light pollution. On a clear night in the country the views can be amazing.
It is one of my abiding regrets that I have never lived in a location simultaneously circumpolar and sufficiently free from light pollution to see the aurora. When I have the cash I’m going to spend a fortnight in Hammerfest in December. What with a solar minimum upon us the timing will probably be right (i.e. ten years from now).
Yes Wm T Sherman, Antarctic bases have a finite lifespan as they inevitably sink into the ice until they are crushed. It’s not so much being buried by snowfall (although that is of course a factor) as the fact that ice is plastic over long timescales. Halley research station on the Brunt ice shelf is on its fifth incarnation and is built on extensible jacks that allow it to be periodically raised.