Images of

ANTARCTICA

Panoramic Photos

Photos © 2002 Seth White

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This is the Barne Glacier, which flows into the Ross Sea just north of Cape Evans. On the sea ice, it is possible to drive/walk right up to the face of this glacier, which is several hundred feet high. This picture was taken from Cape Evans. More pictures from the Barne Glacier here.
Cape Evans. From left to right: Barne Glacier (with Deltas in the foreground), Scott's Terra Nova Hut, Mount Erebus, Little and Big Razorback islands, Tent Island, Inaccessible Island, and the Ross Sea Party cross. This picture was taken during one of the recreational trips for McMurdo and Scott Base personnel. More pictures of Cape Evans and Scott's Hut here.
The Royal Society Range, part of the Transantarctic Mountains, as seen from the sea ice north of McMurdo. The sunset that day produced a spectacular and unforgettable view.
Lovely and oh-so-picturesque McMurdo Station, as seen from the top of Observation Hill.
View from the top of Observation Hill. Scott's men used to hike up here for exercise, and it is a very noticeable landmark in the photographs from the early days of exploration in this region. From left to right: Scott's cross (from 1912), camps and vehicles on the sea ice transition, Hut Point, McMurdo Station, Arrival Heights (with domes), Mount Erebus, T-site, Mount Terra Nova, Windless Bight, Mount Terror, sea ice pressure ridges, Scott Base.
Picture of the infrasound array at Windless Bight, about 15 miles from McMurdo. From left to right: Mount Erebus, infrasound microphone vault and antenna, Mount Terra Nova, Mount Terror, another microphone vault and antenna, BOB (Big Orange Box - the power supply for the array), mattrack, tents, and outhouse. For more pictures of the infrasound station, click here.
Windless Bight again, on a nicer day. Here, you start to get a bit of the feel for what most of Antarctica is like....flat and white. The Ross Island area is relatively intimate as far as Antarctica goes. This region has the Transantarctic Mountains, Dry Valleys, Mount Erebus, Ross Island and various other islands, wildlife, and two major stations right next to each other. The Polar Plateau, which occupies a large part of the continent, has no such natural features. At Windless Bight, you're only 15 or so miles from McMurdo, but you are out a bit on the Ross Ice Shelf. So for part of the view (looking south) you see absolutely nothing except the horizon. This file, unfortunately, is a .gif file due to problems I had putting together a .jpg (this file is 1.7 MB)
View near the Erebus Ice Tongue. This is a floating glacier which extend out onto the sea from the slopes of Mt. Erebus. Some views of this unique feature from the air are here. In the past the field safety team was able to locate fantastic ice caves in the glacier, and field trips were held for people to come out here. But this year the winter weather had obscured the entrance to the caves, and they could not re-locate or uncover an entrance. Bummer. From left to right: Erebus Ice Tongue, Tent Island, Inaccessible Island, Big Razorback, Cape Evans, Turk's Head.
The "Bomb" site on the slopes of Mt. Erebus. I don't actually know what the full title of this place is, but it was named as such because there are lots of lava bombs here. See here for more pictures of the GPS installation at the Bomb site. From left to right, Mt. Erebus, unnamed hill at Bomb site, Mt. Terror, Windless Bight (with helo), antenna and solar mast for defunct seismic station.
View from near the Lower Erebus Hut, on the plateau just below the crater. This is where the Mt. Erebus science group spends most of its time during the field season....this season more so than usual due to the severe weather which kept them camp-bound for a large part of their time. But not today - the weather was fantastic up here. The left hut contains the living areas and the right one is the storage/equipment/outhouse hut.
The Truncated Cones Site. All the sites on Mt. Erebus are beautiful, but this one is probably my favorite. This place is absolutely otherworldly. From left to right: Black Island, Hut Point Peninsula, Mount Discovery, Royal Society Range, sea ice edge, Ross Sea, Cones repeater antenna mast, Erebus crater, and various ice fumaroles. These fumaroles are especially lovely.
The Pegasus Field complex. This is the minimalist approach to aircraft operations. This complex is not manned unless a flight is coming in. The view from McMurdo looks straight out towards Pegasus, which appears as a few little dots below Mt. Discovery. So you see most of the same things from here that you do from McMurdo. However the perspective is significantly different. From here, McMurdo Station nearly disappears into the end of Hut Point Peninsula. On a clearer day, Mt. Erebus would have also be seen looming overhead, whereas there are only a couple spots on station where you can (barely) see the top of the mountain.
A panorama taken while the American Tern was struggling through the turning basin. It got stuck in this area, and it took several hours of both icebreakers working back and forth around it before it could finally make the last 1/4 mile into port. I am not sure why the ship got stuck coming in, since backing up to go out of port should have been more difficult....but that went very quickly. Anyway, it was interesting to watch these ships operate right outside of town, and listen in on the radio as they discussed how to get the Tern freed from the ice. From left to right, Mt. Discovery, Brown Peninsula, American Tern, Polar Sea, Healy, Hut Point (with Vince's Cross).
Not much color in this picture. A dreary day during offload of the American Tern, as seen from the McMurdo Ground Station, a ways above town. The Tern is sitting in Winter Quarters Bay, the exact same spot where Scott brought the Discovery in 1902. On days like this, White Island (in the top left) is ghostly, fading seamlessly in and out of the ice and sky.
A view of the McMurdo area during offload of the fuel tanker Matthiesen. This particular sight has not been seen at McMurdo before. Normally, the fuel tanker will follow the ice channel into port. But this year the ice prevented it from doing this. So the two icebreakers widened the channel enough to allow open water about 4 miles from town. They laid out two fuel hoses to the tanker and pumped the fuel in from there. The Polar Sea is at right, and the tanker Matthiesen is in the center, at the end of the sea ice road heading out from Hut Point. There is another vessel in the distance to the right - this is the Healy. Hiding behind the Matthiesen is the Palmer, a research icebreaker. It never made it to McMurdo this year - the closest it came was to pull along side the tanker to refuel. So personnel scheduled to depart McMurdo on the Palmer either drove out on the ice to meet it, or took helicopters.
View looking out over the sea ice on a bike trip around Ob Hill in early March. This was one of the few moments I have had here where I fully realized exactly where I was and how lucky I was to be here (and riding my bike too!). The panorama turned out great, too.
The day of the last flight leaving McMurdo. Much delayed and long awaited this year due to the fuel tanker offload. But at last the day came - Sunday March 9. The flight left from the Pegasus airfield, and thus was visible from town. The telescope in Crary provided a great spot to look out and see the plane coming in, getting loaded, and leaving. I took some pics through the telescope (will have a page of pictures up from the whole last-flight-event sometime...), and some of them I strung together in a panorama showing the whole affair. So here that is. Note the Black Island station on the hills above the runway to the right of the plane (with the white circular domes). This is where all of our off-continent communications go through.
This is a view directly from McMurdo during a March sunset. No really, this is the view from the "office window". From left to right: Minna Bluff (with the newly opened Pegasus shortcut road...why isn't this road open during summer when the airfield is in full swing????), Black Island, Mount Discovery, Brown Peninsula, Royal Society Range, various mountains and the entrances to the Dry Valleys, and the end of Hut Point Peninsula with Vince's Cross.
We had a severe 1-day storm a couple weeks ago...on a Sunday, naturally. The Kiwis came over for Sunday brunch (as tradition dictates), and ended up getting stuck at McMurdo all day because the conditions did not allow them to drive back to Scott Base. The next day I saw that Arrival Heights had experienced 125 knot gusts. So I figured it would be a good idea to check the riometer array. The riometers are just thin antennas held up by guy wires, and occasionally the wires will come loose. After checking out the riometers, I kept walking to a little point overlooking the west side of Hut point Peninsula. And this was the view. 'Nuff said.
On a recent excursion to Castle Rock, we saw this sight while driving along the route. Very dim light lit up the top of Mts. Erebus and Terror and produced these pastel colors. I particularly liked the pink plume coming out of Erebus, which itself was just appearing from behind the clouds.
This is White Island as seen from Pegasus Field. It looks like you ought to be able to hike over in an hour or two....but it's actually ~40 miles away!
Man, this is a nice panorama, courtesy of the Masked Boondoggler. I think this was taken at the Taylor Valley somewhere. What a landscape.
This is a panoramic view from Marble Point, again taken by the Masked Boondoggler. Icebergs are seen frozen in the Ross Sea, Mt. Erebus is visible, the Wilson Piedmont Glacier is visible, and so is the unique and cool soil that surrounds this area.
This is a view of the Pegasus runway lights at night. They are visible from town, and at night, they're quite the sight. You look out from the usual scene of McMurdo over the sea ice, expecting to see nothing but blackness, and here are these glowing pulsating lights in the middle of your view. They're even better up close (see here for more pics of the runway lights).
This is a pic from a morning spent out at Pegasus field with Dave and Steve. I was exceptionally lucky to be out here this day, as it delivered the most spectacular view of Ross Island I've ever seen. Here are Mt. Erebus and Terror with some incredible cloud formations, backlit by the rising sun. For more pictures from this incredible day, see here.
A panorama looking over McMurdo from the base of Ob Hill. This was the day of the second flight of Winfly, and one of the best nacreous cloud displays of the season. I didn't do the greatest job of stitching the photos together, but it still turned out alright.