Many
parts of the Ross and Weddell
seas are covered by ice shelves,
or ice sheets floating on the
sea. These shelves—the
Ross Ice Shelf and the Filchner-Ronne
Ice Shelf—together with
other shelves around the continental
margins, constitute about 10
percent of the area of Antarctic
ice.
The
Arctic
Circle is a
parallel, or line of latitude
around the Earth, at approximately
66°30' N.
Because
of the Earth's inclination of
about 23 1/2° to the vertical,
it marks the southern limit
of the area within which, for
one day or more each year, the
Sun does not set (about June
21) or rise (about December
21).
The
length of continuous day or
night increases northward from
one day on the Arctic Circle
to six months at the North Pole.[3]
This is a time lapse of a whole day
that takes place about 70 miles below
the arctic circle. It is the sun rising
in the South and setting in the west
horizontally across the sky.
Time-lapse video filmed in Antarctica,
in and around McMurdo Station and
Scott Base.
Each year the sun is below the horizon
for 4 months in the middle of winter,
and above the horizon for 4 months
in summer. During the couple of months
in between we have more-or-less normal
days.
Includes shots of auroras and the
very rare polar stratospheric nacreous
clouds, which form when ozone depleting
gases crystallize in the upper atmosphere
in the intense cold.
Summer population is about 1200 people,
winter about 200.
Arctic Circle