Much of the ice that blankets Antarctica is tied up in glaciers that slide slowly toward the sea. Fed by these glaciers, ice shelves form along the Antarctic coast, floating as thick, frozen plates on the sea surface. Every so often, these ice shelves calve large icebergs. In March 2000, a colossal iceberg calved off […]
By Ludovic Brucker The only wildlife we saw during our three-week traverse was three snow petrels and one Antarctic petrel. I still haven’t decided if they were sort of a Christmas gift, or the announcement of a storm! The birds visited us when we were at camp 5,430 km (265 mi) inland. I was surprised […]
By Ludovic Brucker Once the traverse was over and we had drilled nine snow cores (with a combined length of 156 meters, or 512 ft), the next step was flying to each of our drilling sites and bringing the cores to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) station to store them before they are shipped […]
Last week, Flora Lichtman of Science Friday put together a short video about the views of Earth NASA has produced over the years. She began with the famous Earthrise photo taken by the crew of Apollo 8, then interviewed me and NASA scientist Gene Feldman. We discussed the differences between photographs and data visualizations, and […]
Credit: NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environment Office/Rhiannon Blaauw Asteroid 433 Eros made a close approach to Earth the morning of January 31st coming within 0.17 AU (15 million miles) of our planet. In this set of images taken that morning, the bright moving dot near the center of the field is the 21 mile long Eros. Somewhere on …
A meteor streaks across the skies above Huntsville, Ala. (NASA) The night sky is constantly changing. The Earth rotates and revolves about the sun, creating a backdrop of stars that is always in motion. The moon grows large in the sky, and then smaller again, in a seemingly endless cycle. Now and then, brilliant streaks …
A Less Hardy Hardiness Map The USDA has unveiled a new version of its plant hardiness map, which gardeners use to gauge which plants will survive in which climate zone. (Check your nearest seed packet.) In the newest iteration, many zones have shifted northward because winters aren’t as cold as they were 22 years ago […]
By Ludovic Brucker The main objective of deep field traverses like ours is to make in-situ measurements and collect samples, which obviously cannot be done from air or space. So, during the 2010-11 and 2011-12 SEAT field seasons, we have been taking in-situ snow and radar measurements. We typically had two different types of days […]
By Michelle Koutnik Each of our six different camping sites consisted of one cook tent, four sleeping tents, and a bathroom area (more on that later). The cook tent was a “Scott” tent, which is an enduring style and named for the polar explorer Robert Scott. It was a tight space for five people but […]
By Clement Miege Hi there! After more than three weeks spent in the field, our team is very happy to be finally back, with many memories of the traverse. This year has been a very intense experience and I would like to tell you a little more about this expedition. I will focus on the […]
