Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 09/01/2011 - 18:33
Forums
Adaptations of Marine Worms in Antarctica

Mike -

Seeing a picture of the sunrise and sunset brought up a question. First off, it looks beautiful there. But if you only have a few short hours of twilight/dusk as day and not much "sunlight", do you see stars the rest of the time? Are there any Southern Lights? I could see the Little Dipper clearly when I was on a walk with my dog this evening; can you see the Little Dipper?

~Alli

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 19:24

Michael League

Alli,Great questions! Yes, on clear nights (no clouds) we see the stars.
Since we're in the opposite hemisphere from you, we're seeing a
different part of the sky from you. So, no, we're not looking at the
same constellations.
Dr. Stacy Kim took me out of McMurdo Station last night and we did a
little star gazing. We could see the "Milky Way", the galaxy that we
are in and a famous part of the southern sky called the Southern Sky.
I was really surprised to see some objects moving across the sky. They
weren't planes. We were seeing satellites. They orbit earth and allow
GPS, communication, and other wonderful technologies.
The one thing we're hoping to see is called "aurora australis", the
Southern Lights. These happen when charged particles hit the upper
atmosphere and produce beautiful colored effects in the sky. I really
hope that we get to see them.
The only problem is our daylight is lasting longer. We started at 2
hours of daylight when we arrived two weeks ago and we're already up to
8 hours! Yikes!
Mike