The Antarctic Sun: News about Antarctica

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Weddell Seals Sing Songs Humans Can't Hear
Science / The Biological World
Monday January 18, 2021
The seals of McMurdo Sound are more vocal than previously thought. A new research paper published in the December edition of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America shows that Weddell...

A Bot in the Ocean
Science / Oceans and Atmosphere
Monday December 14, 2020
During the past austral summer, scientists released an autonomous seafaring robot into the Southern Ocean. For four months, the small "Wave Glider" navigated the frigid Antarctic waters, collecting data on the surrounding...

An Aerial Assessment of Adelie Penguins
Science / The Biological World
Monday November 30, 2020
Flying robots are helping scientists track the population of Adelie Penguins. This past austral summer, researchers flew a small fleet of coordinated unmanned aerial vehicles, or "UAVs," over Cape Crozier, one of...

The Infamy of the Skua
Features / Life on the Ice
Monday November 16, 2020
Like clockwork in late November, the residents of McMurdo Station look to the sky and spot something that many haven't seen in months - birds. The arrival of these feathered creatures is...

Podcast: The Search and Rescue Team
Features / Operations
Monday November 02, 2020
In Antarctica, scientists conduct cutting edge research on a harsh and barren continent. It's no easy task, but to help make it happen the U.S. Antarctic Program employs small army of support...

Southernmost Telescope Gets an Array of Upgrades
Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics
Monday October 12, 2020
One of the telescopes at the bottom of the world is getting a major upgrade. The South Pole's venerable Keck Array is being reconstituted into the more powerful BICEP Array, making it...

A helicopter touches down next to the SuperTIGER landing site. The recovery team would spend three hard days to retrieve the payload that had to be brought down early.

Heavy Cosmic Rays - Part II: The Death and Life of SuperTIGER-II
Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics
Monday September 28, 2020
The season before SuperTIGER-II's successful 2019 flight, the payload had an unexpectedly short flight over Antarctica. Brought down after less than a day because of a problem with the balloon carrying it, it landed in a crevasse field 150 miles from McMurdo Station. This could easily have ended in calamity. Instead, it led to one of the most daring and complicated recoveries of a long-duration balloon payload in recent memory.

The SuperTIGER-II payload is suspended from a crane during a

Heavy Cosmic Rays - Part I: The Flight of SuperTIGER-II
Science / Space and Atmospheric Physics
Monday September 14, 2020
In December 2019, SuperTIGER clawed its way back into the upper atmosphere. The second flight of the SuperTIGER cosmic ray experiment, officially dubbed SuperTIGER-II, flew high above the icy continent for more than a month, collecting data on the high-energy particles that zip through the cosmos.

Katie Holmes works on a Slocum glider from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, used to monitor the oceanic conditions around Palmer Station.

Detecting Anomalous Life Swarms
Science / The Biological World
Tuesday September 01, 2020
The seas around Antarctica are alive, but that life is not evenly distributed everywhere. Vast regions of barren ocean are punctuated by oases of concentrated nutrients that create hotspots of biological activity.

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