Today's Image

Mist over an Antarctic research station

Brown-yellow mist, blue sky.
View larger. | Twilight in Antarctica. Image via the European Space Agency.

The European Space Agency (ESA) released this image this month of a twilight mist above the Concordia Research Station, a French-Italian facility built two miles (3,233 meters) above sea level at a location called Dome C on the Antarctic Plateau. ESA has called this location the remotest base on Earth and explained:

The nearest human beings are stationed some 600 km [about 400 miles] away at the Russian Vostok base, making Concordia more remote than the International Space Station [about 250 miles, or 400 km, above Earth].

It’s also very cold there, of course. ESA said:

A place of extremes, temperatures can drop to -80 degrees C [-112 F] in the winter, with a yearly average temperature of -50 degrees C [90 degrees F].

The Concordia Research Station undergoes about four months of continuous night each year. Sunlight returns in August; that’s probably when the photo above was taken. Now, ESA said, the station is getting ready for the influx of summer visitors. Linens are being washed, mattresses cleaned and changed, and fresh food supplies are arriving. Concordia hosts up to 80 researchers in the busy summer months – from around now through about February – who come to set up sensors and run experiments.

Read more via ESA: First sun come to Concordia Research Station in August

Read more via ESA: The most remote base on Earth

Read more via ESA: Antarctic mist

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Location of Dome C in Antarctica.

Bottom line: As we in the Northern Hemisphere experience longer nights and shorter days, Antarctica is nearing its season of 24-hour sunlight. This photo shows a period of twilight at the Concordia Research Station in East Antarctica.

Via ESA

Posted 
November 1, 2019
 in 
Today's Image

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