Sunrise, Sunset:
The sunrise and sunsets are a strange thing in Antarctica. In the summer months (our winter)the sun is high over head all day, but in the winter it almost never rises. The longer winter days sometimes see the sun for a couple hours but no more. Below is a chart with the sunrise and setting throughout the year.
Other occurences are things such as the Mercury sunrise described here by the Enviromental Scince and Technology magazine:
"When the sun rises and finally ends the long dark polar winter, it fires up a unique series of chemical reactions that dump mercury out of the atmosphere and into the pristine polar environments; hence the term, mercury sunrise. The mercury then accumulates in the snowpack and is released as the snow melts and the brief polar growing season begins."
"The research indicates that atmospheric mercury rains down throughout the world’s coastal polar regions and that when it does, it can enter polar food webs..."The mercury sunrise depends on ultraviolet light, open water and active sea ice, all of which have been increasing in Polar Regions over the last few decades. According to the Barrow data, the polar sunrise triggers a series of chemical reactions that convert the elemental mercury vapor into a highly soluble form of oxidized gaseous mercury that rapidly accumulates in the polar snowpack..."They estimate that between 50 and 300 tons of mercury are being dumped from the atmosphere into these polar environments annually."
Solar Eclipses also occur in a rare form on the South Pole:
"Only partial solar eclipses can be observed from the North and South poles."
Here are a couple amazing pictures. One of a solar eclpise taken on Nov. 23 of '03, another of a sunset taken in the Antarctica Sound.
http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/2006-2007/sctn01-14-2007.cfm
Here is a linc to The Antarctic Sun where you might find some intersting information.
posted by Chrysler @ 5:29 PM
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