Bellingshausen Station () is a Russian Antarctic station at Collins Harbour, on King George Island of the

South Shetland Islands The South Shetland Islands are a group of List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands, Antarctic islands located in the Drake Passage with a total area of . They lie about north of the Antarctic Peninsula, and between southwest of the n ...

. It was one of the first research stations founded by the

Soviet Antarctic Expedition The Soviet Antarctic Expedition (SAE or SovAE) (, ''Sovetskaya antarkticheskaya ekspeditsiya'') was part of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of the Soviet Committee on Antarctic Research of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. It was ...

in 1968. It is also the location of Trinity Church, the only permanently staffed

Eastern Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy, otherwise known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity or Byzantine Christianity, is one of the three main Branches of Christianity, branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholic Church, Catholicism and Protestantism ...

church in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

. The station is connected by unimproved roads to the nearby stations: Chilean Base Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva, Chinese Great Wall Station, and Uruguayan Artigas Base. It is

antipodal Antipode or Antipodes may refer to: Mathematics * Antipodal point, the diametrically opposite point on a circle or ''n''-sphere, also known as an antipode * Antipode, the convolution inverse of the identity on a Hopf algebra Geography * Antipodes ...

to a location in Russian

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

, ~ west from

Yakutsk Yakutsk ( ) is the capital and largest city of Sakha, Russia, located about south of the Arctic Circle. Fueled by the mining industry, Yakutsk has become one of Russia's most rapidly growing regional cities, with a population of 355,443 at the ...

History

The station is named for the 19th-century Russian explorer of the Antarctic Fabian von Bellingshausen. In October 2018, it was the site of the first attempted murder in Antarctica.

Climate

The

Antarctic Peninsula The Antarctic Peninsula, known as O'Higgins Land in Chile and Tierra de San Martin in Argentina, and originally as Graham Land in the United Kingdom and the Palmer Peninsula in the United States, is the northernmost part of mainland Antarctica. ...

and its nearby islands are considered to have the mildest living conditions in Antarctica. Bellingshausen Station's climate is strongly influenced by the surrounding ocean. Under the Köppen system, it is one of the few locations in Antarctica classified as a

tundra climate The tundra climate is a polar climate sub-type located in high latitudes and high mountains. It is classified as ET according to the Köppen climate classification. It is a climate which at least one month has an average temperature high enough ...

rather than an

ice cap climate An ice cap climate is a polar climate where no mean monthly temperature exceeds . The climate generally covers areas at high altitudes and Polar regions of Earth, polar regions (60–90° north and south latitude), such as Antarctica and some of ...

. Variation in temperatures are small with the coldest month, July, averaging and in the warmest month. With only 591.2 hours of sunshine per year, the weather is often unsettled and cloudy throughout the year with precipitation in the form of snow, rain and drizzle occurring often. On average, of precipitation falls per year.

Gallery

2005-02-25 Trinity Church at Bellingshaussen.jpg, Trinity Church at Bellingshausen 2005-02-25 Inside Trinity Church.jpg, Interior of Trinity Church Russian Antarctic Base Bellinghausen.JPG, Bellingshausen in 2012 Antarctic Bellinghausen.jpg, Bellingshausen in January 1985 Bellingshausen-at-night-4755.JPG, Bellingshausen at night

In popular culture

On January 21, 2014, American tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle set up an impromptu tattoo station in a scientist's guesthouse where he tattooed his signature tattoo—his autograph—on project assistant/tattoo historian Dr. Anna Felicity Friedman, making him the first person to tattoo on all seven continents.

References

External links

United States Antarctic Inspection Team 2006: Report of Inspections under Article VII of the Antarctic Treaty and Article 14 of the Protocol on Environmental Protection. March 21, 2007
Includes detailed description of this and some nearby stations)

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COMNAP Antarctic Facilities
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COMNAP Antarctic Facilities Map
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Bellingshausen Station Photos
{{Antarctica Geography of King George Island (South Shetland Islands) Outposts of the South Shetland Islands Russia and the Antarctic Soviet Union and the Antarctic 1968 establishments in Antarctica