Antarctic Sunset

[Written by Elizabeth Leonardis for our old blog, So Civilized]

Enjoying the view

The days are getting shorter as the summer comes to an end in Antarctica. Fortunate for us, these shorter days bring a greater likelihood of sunsets, which have been hard to come by the past few months. These photos were taken of the glacier and surrounding scenery at Palmer Station on February 10th.

Our rapidly retreating glacier

The glacier close-up

Our view of the continent from station

The temperatures continue to hover around freezing. Most days we get up to around 2ºC (35ºF) and the nights are starting to dip below freezing. The dark is coming back in full force. The sun will be setting tonight around 8pm and rising at 7am. We turn our clocks back this coming weekend so things will really start feeling like winter soon.

Yesterday the ship left to head north after taking another group of scientists on a month long cruise. The tradition is to give people a proper send off by jumping in the ocean as the boat pulls away from the pier. Being as this was our last opportunity to jump (next time the ship leaves we will be on it) and our friends Maggie and Andrew were leaving, Alex & I took the plunge. You can check out an early post with photos from our first jump. There is nothing like jumping into freezing cold water at 6am in your bikini. I’m glad I won’t be doing that again. Happy that I had the experience though.