As we continue to organise our life on board for the long polar night ahead, a constant preoccupation is the production, use and discharge of water. Ensuring that we have a sufficient amount of good quality water for our basic needs is a big task for at least two people each day. Like most large boats, we have a watermaker onboard that makes freshwater from seawater through the process of osmosis. In temperate climates we can produce up to 200 liters per hour. However, in our current position close to 83 degrees north the water temperature is -1.5 degrees celsius and the temperature in the forward hold (the location of the watermaker) has descended to -7 degrees, below the minimum operating temperature of 0 degrees. Therefore, we now produce our water by melting ice and sno...

IPY starts in March 2007, but not everybody is waiting until then to start celebrating the poles. L.A.-based artist Lita Albuquerque has just announced that she will be creating an installation piece on Antarctica in next month, Dec 22, 2006. The piece will be named "Stellar Axis: Antarctica" and is produced at the invitation of the US National Science Foundation's Artists and Writers Program. Lita's project already has an accompanying website, which in time will contain video and diary entries documenting the art installation process. You can also read the press release, and you can find out...

Huge areas of sea floor (around 3,250 km²) have been freed up by the collapse 4 years ago of the Larsen B platform along the Antarctic Peninsula – leaving a blank spot on Antarctic maps.Polarstern, the research flagship of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, will shortly conduct there the first major biological research. The Science25 different research projects will be undertaken by 47 scientists, encompassing disciplines as diverse as benthology, plankton...

This winter, a major new telescope is being built at the South Pole to study deep questions about the history and composition of the universe. The 10-meter (33-foot) diameter South Pole Telescope (SPT) will be pieced together by a team of two dozen scientists, engineers, and technicians in record time. In a special series of four live webcasts, blogs, and video updates from the South Pole to the Exploratorium website in November and December 2006, follow along as a team of cosmologists from the University of Chicago and their colleagues race to complete their project before the short Antarctic season comes to a close. The South Pole Telescope is one of the major scientific projects launching during the...

Three researchers from the University of Lapland's Arctic Centre are in Antarctica and are blogging their research and life there: Glaciologist-paleoclimatologist John Moore, geophysicist Aslak Grinsted and chemist Kristiina Virkkunen. Their blog is here. They are doing research on a blue ice area about 200 km from Abo...