With all our scientific equipment staged with ANZ in Christchurch, ready to fly down to the Ice, all that remains for me and Alex is to pack a few good books, set our lives in order for the next nine and half months and bid farewell to those around us - the latter possibly being the hardest part of all. Last night, to mark our imminent departure, we met with friends and colleagues from the University of Otago at the Carey’s Bay Hotel, just outside Port Chalmers – the last port of call for many early Antarctic expedition including those of Scott and Shackleton. The hotel is reputedly the location Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s last meal before setting sail from New Zealand on his fateful journey to Antarctica in November, 1910. Although were unable to confirm this story, it did make fo...

The February issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears cyberzine is now available! Arctic and Antarctic Birds was co-produced with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This partnership allows us to bring you exciting and engaging ideas for incorporating birds into a life sciences unit. Do you want to know more about birds and their adaptations? This month's Science Content Knowledge article discusses some of the birds that live in or migrate to the polar regions and how birds stay warm in cold weather. Fol...

New York City will host its third International Polar Weekend at the American Museum of Natural History on Saturday and Sunday 2/7 and 2/8 from noon to 5PM each day. This family style event is a New York celebration of highlights from the International Polar Year (IPY). The weekend will include activities for all ages, including performances; short lectures; film clips with commentary; and an interactive Polar Fair with scientists, explorers, artists, and performers from Greenland, Norway, and Canada, as well as the United States. Event highlights include:

Photo Credit - AGAP team There were many times in the last two months where it seemed that the Antarctic Continent would win, keeping hidden the extensive landscape of subglacial lakes and mountains beneath the several kilometers of ice on Dome A. All the advance planning and negotiating with program leaders and logistics groups for enough days in the field to run the airborne geophysics were of little importance once we arrived on Antarctica. At this point we were negotiating with the continent herself, and we learned she can drive a hard bargain! The group at AGAP S camp had anticipated...

The fourth International Polar Year has led to the creation of a number of new projects and initiatives, many of which will continue after the IPY officially comes to an end in March 2009. One of these initiatives, the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS), which sprang from the IPY Youth Steering Committee, (IPY project n° 168), has grown in size and stature in three short years. Since APECS founders Dr. Jenny Baeseman and Hugh Lantuit decided in 2006 to create an organisation aimed at helping...

UNEP/GRID-Arendal, with financial support from the Research Council of Norway (Forskningsr

Draft documents for the IPY Education Working Group to edit, concerning development of the Polar Resource Book. If you have questions about this project, please contact Karen Edwards ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) ALL DOCUMENTS ARE DRAFT, please do not circulate unless within the Education Working Group, or with their consent. Promotion Resource Book Poster (low res) Contributions Did you develop or adopt a new polar science activity or program for your students or c...

It's less than two months before the first Hot Countdown of the REXUS 6 student rocket campaign. Here are some details about the NISSE payload: The NISSE payload description The REXUS 6 rocket campaign is approaching. Currently, the first Hot Countdown is scheduled to be on the 10th March, 2009. Vidar Hølland from the NISSE team has been the main responsible of the mechanical design and construction of the experiment payload together with rocket engineers in the University of Bergen, Norway. The payload is almost ready and some details are described below. ...

Neil Ross writes: Rather belated greetings from Subglacial Lake Ellsworth (SLE). I had hoped to post something a bit sooner in the season (we have already been here three weeks) but there has been far too much work to do and good weather to do it in. Sorry! Here is the first installment from late last month, more to come... 26-31 December: Last season at SLE we undertook a series of geophysical measurements (seismics and radar) to map the size and depth of the lake, which is located beneath three kilometers of West Antarctic Ice Sheet. This year, the primary goals were the resurvey of the location of 60 metal poles left in the ice surface last season, using a GPS to measure their elevation, how far they had travelled, and in whic...

At the end of 2007, teacher Turtle Haste's eighth-grade class at James Monroe Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico reported on a project to measure sun shadows all over the world, including at several Antarctic stations. to better understand how the Earth and the Sun interact, and how the seasons progress. The project is going strong, and there is now a call for everyone to join in. There is a new project page up, and also a Google Map that shows recent measurements: ...