Alumni Travel Reading Lists 2025: Journey to Antarctica

LIMA: Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica. (NASA, USGS, BAS, NSF)

A project of NASA, "[t]he Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA) is the first-ever true-color high-resolution satellite view of the Antarctic continent, enabling you to see Antarctica as it would really appear if you were hovering above it."

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Sentry by Vanessa Stephen made available through a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 generic deed

Antarctica. Humans have only had a foothold on the frozen continent for about a century. First the explorers arrived. Some survived to tell the tale, some did not. 

The Belgica, the ship carrying the Belgian expedition from 1897-1899. In the Public Domain and retrieved from commons.wikimedia.org.

Then came the whalers and fishermen, who still troll in small numbers despite international law.

NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne science mission to study Earth's polar ice. Image courtesy of NASA Goddard Photo through a CC BY 2.0 attribution deed. www.nasa.gov/icebridge

Finally, the scientists, who had joined explorers from the beginning, but are now the primary population. Antarctic has many aspects to investigate: geography, hydrology, glaciology, global climate patterns, neutrino detection, austral lights, katabatic winds, ancient entombed seas, seals, penguins, petrels, whales, stories of survival, death, tragedy, triumph, discovery, whimsy, experimentation, growing environmental threats, exotic international legal structures, and yes – even culture.  Here’s a taste.

Mount Jackson. Courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org and used under a CC BY-SA 2.0