Interestingly, from your desktop, though, you can now visit huts built by Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott, even plant a virtual flag on the Ceremonial South Pole.
“It is the next best thing to being there,” said Alex Starns, technical manager of Google’s Street View program.
With a complete 360-degree imagery was captured on a lightweight tripod camera with a fisheye lens, with the help of the Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota and the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust, Google said.
As a matter of fact, Antarctica was the last continent to be explored, with Roald Amundsen making it to its center and Ernest Shackleton crossing it early in the 20th century.
Interior of a hut built by Ernest Shackleton, who led the first expedition to cross Antarctica from sea to sea. Photo: Google/University of Minnesota Polar Geospatial Center/New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust
The above image portrays inside of the Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic hut, remarkably preserved for a century. In addition, collection of these panoramic images has also been added to Google’s World Wonders site for users who want to learn more about South Pole exploration.
“Feel free to leave your boots and mittens behind, and embark on a trip to Antarctica,” Starns, wrote in a post.
Amazingly, in a 1913 newspaper advertisement that captured the spirit of their endeavors, Shackleton wrote, “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in event of success.”
Numerous explorers’ camps and base stations have been almost untouched in the decades since, with Antarctica’s few tourists and even its research community unable to reach them.
You can jump inside places like polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s hut and the other small wooden buildings that served as bases for landmark expeditions in the early 1900s. Built to withstand the drastic weather conditions for the few short years, the structures are still intact, along with well-preserved examples of the food, medicine, survival gear and equipment used during the expeditions.
You will also be able to see the South Pole Telescope, the hut of Robert Falcon Scott, who led Britain’s 1901 Discovery Expedition, Cape Royds Adélie Penguin Rookery and the Ceremonial South Pole with its international flags planted in the frozen tundra.
Ceremonial South Pole. Photo: Google/University of Minnesota Polar Geospatial Center/New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust
In fact, the sites remain so remote in an age of technologically advancement travel makes the explorers’ accomplishments all the more extraordinary. Still intact after more than a century, the locations exhibit food, medicine, survival gear, and equipment used during early expeditions.
“Now anyone can explore these huts and get insight into how these men [explorers] lived for months at a time,” Starns said.
“We wanted to show the legacy of these early explorers,” said Brad Herried, cartography director at the Polar Geospatial Center. “The logistics were so different for these guys 100 years ago. It is noteworthy to see how they did it. Where they set up base camps, the journey they made, is still well preserved.”
Herried said it is nearly impossible to reach the sites. Of course, it is not easy to reach modern scientific installations, either. The South Pole telescope and Cape Royds Adelie Penguin Rookery are among the contemporary sites included in the new World Wonders Project release.
“It is not just the thrill of going there,” said Herried of his colleagues’ motivations for working in such an extreme, isolated environment. “We are trying to answer scientific questions. That is why we go.”
Finally, the inclusion of the South Pole to the Google project means Africa is the only missing continent among the geographically grouped spots.
Elaborating further the executive said, “With this access, schoolchildren as far as Bangalore can count penguin colonies on Snow Hill Island, and geologists in Georgia can trace sedimentary layers in the Dry Valleys from the comfort of their desks,” Starns wrote.
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