Dome C
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Dome C , also known as dôme Circe, Dome Charlie ( US) or dôme Concordia, is located at
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. ...
at an elevation of above sea level, on one of several
domes A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a m ...
of the
Antarctic Ice Sheet The Antarctic ice sheet is a continental glacier covering 98% of the Antarctic continent, with an area of and an average thickness of over . It is the largest of Earth's two current ice sheets, containing of ice, which is equivalent to 61% of ...
. Location dome C is on the Antarctic Plateau, inland from the French research station at
Dumont D'Urville Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville (; 23 May 1790 – 8 May 1842) was a French explorer and naval officer who explored the south and western Pacific, Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica. As a botanist and cartographer, he gave his name ...
, inland from the Australian
Casey Station Casey Station, commonly called Casey, is one of three permanent stations and research outposts in Antarctica managed by the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD). Casey lies on the northern side of the Bailey Peninsula (Antarctica), Bailey Peninsu ...
and inland from the Italian Zucchelli Station at Terra Nova Bay. Russia's Vostok Station is away. Dome C is the site of the Concordia Research Station, jointly operated by
France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
and
Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
.


History

In the 1970s, dome C was the site of ice core drilling by field teams of several nations. Designated Dome Charlie (
NATO Phonetic Alphabet The International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet or simply the Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, commonly known as the NATO phonetic alphabet, is the most widely used set of clear-code words for communicating the letters of the Latin/Roman ...
code for the letter ''C'') by the U.S. Naval Support Force, Antarctica, and its Squadron VXE-6, which provided logistical support to the field teams, in January and November 1975, three LC-130 Hercules aircraft suffered severe damage during attempted takeoffs. In November 1975 and November 1976, the U.S. Navy established field camps on Dome Charlie to recover the aircraft. Following major structural repairs and replacement of engines in the field, the three LC-130s were flown to
McMurdo Station McMurdo Station is an American Antarctic research station on the southern tip of Ross Island. It is operated by the United States through the United States Antarctic Program (USAP), a branch of the National Science Foundation. The station is ...
on December 26, 1975, January 14, 1976, and December 25, 1976. From November 1977 to March 1978 a French party of 13 settled down in the existing camp left by the aircraft rescuers. They brought several tons of equipment—thanks to the VXE-6 airplanes—and while there ice-cored down to 980 m extracting samples 45,000 to 50,000 years old. During the Antarctic summer of 1979, the camp was re-occupied by Americans and French, under the auspices of the US Antarctic Research Program, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Deep ice core drilling, meteorology and seismic studies were conducted. The camp, with a maximum summer population of 18, was operated and maintained by four employees of ITT Antarctic Services and one US Navy medical corpsman. When the camp was shut down for the season in about January, 1980, it was left mostly intact, with a radio-isotope powered remote weather station operational. In 1992, France decided to build a new station on the Antarctic Plateau. The program was later joined by Italy. In 1996, a French-Italian team established a summer camp at dome C. The two main objectives of the camp were the provision of logistical support for the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) and the construction of a permanent research station. The new all-year facility, Concordia Station, became operational in 2005. The
Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (ACAN or US-ACAN) is an advisory committee of the United States Board on Geographic Names responsible for recommending commemorative names for features in Antarctica. History The committee was established ...
(US-ACAN) considers "Dome Charlie" to be superior to the informal name, "dome C," and that it has precedence over "dome Circe", a name suggested from Greek mythology after
Circe In Greek mythology, Circe (; ) is an enchantress, sometimes considered a goddess or a nymph. In most accounts, Circe is described as the daughter of the sun god Helios and the Oceanid Perse (mythology), Perse. Circe was renowned for her vast kn ...
, the bewitching queen of
Aeaea Aeaea, Ææa or Eëä ( or ; ) was a mythological island said to be the home of the goddess-sorceress Circe. In Homer's ''Odyssey'', Odysseus tells Alcinous that he stayed here for one year on his way home to Ithaca. Before leaving Aeaea, ...
island, one of the children of solar god
Helios In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Helios (; ; Homeric Greek: ) is the god who personification, personifies the Sun. His name is also Latinized as Helius, and he is often given the epithets Hyperion ("the one above") an ...
and the Oceanid nymph Perse, who changed men into animals by magic, by members of the SPRI airborne radio echo sounding team in 1982. Later, it was named "dome Concordia" after that same French/Italian scientific base. In February 2025, scientists confirmed the successful extraction of the oldest continuous ice core ever with distinct layers of the ice frozen between 900,000 and 1.2-million years ago.


Climate

Dome C is one of the coldest places on Earth. Temperatures hardly rise above in summer and can fall below in winter. The annual average air temperature is . Humidity is low and it is also very dry, with very little or no precipitation throughout the year. Dome C does not experience the katabatic winds typical of the coastal regions of
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. ...
because of its elevated location and its relative distance from the edges of the Antarctic Plateau. Typical wind speed in winter is 2.8 m/s (6 mph). Dome C is situated on top of the Antarctic Polar Plateau, the world's largest frozen desert. No animals or plants live at a distance of more than a few hundred meters from the
Southern Ocean The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the world ocean, generally taken to be south of 60th parallel south, 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is the seco ...
. However, south polar skuas have been spotted overflying the station, away from their nearest food sources. It is believed that these
seabird Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adaptation, adapted to life within the marine ecosystem, marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent ...
s have learned to cross the frozen white continent instead of circumnavigating it.


Astronomical observatory

Dome C is notable for its potential to be an extremely good
astronomical Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include ...
observation site; the transparency of the Antarctic atmosphere allows stars to be observed, even when the
Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...
is at its highest possible elevation angle of 38°. The good viewing is due to very low
infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...
sky emission, extremely low
humidity Humidity is the concentration of water vapor present in the air. Water vapor, the gaseous state of water, is generally invisible to the human eye. Humidity indicates the likelihood for precipitation (meteorology), precipitation, dew, or fog t ...
, a high percentage of
cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles, suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...
-free time, low atmospheric
aerosol An aerosol is a suspension (chemistry), suspension of fine solid particles or liquid Drop (liquid), droplets in air or another gas. Aerosols can be generated from natural or Human impact on the environment, human causes. The term ''aerosol'' co ...
and
dust Dust is made of particle size, fine particles of solid matter. On Earth, it generally consists of particles in the atmosphere that come from various sources such as soil lifted by wind (an aeolian processes, aeolian process), Types of volcan ...
content, and freedom from
light pollution Light pollution is the presence of any unwanted, inappropriate, or excessive artificial Visible spectrum, lighting. In a descriptive sense, the term ''light pollution'' refers to the effects of any poorly implemented lighting sources, during the ...
and background light other than auroras and moonlight. This location was a serious candidate for the ESO's E-ELT project. However, sky coverage is less than at lower latitude locations as northern celestial hemisphere objects never rise or are too low above the horizon. The Proceedings of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific discuss the suitability of the site for astronomy in terms of the seeing. They determined the
median The median of a set of numbers is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a Sample (statistics), data sample, a statistical population, population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as the “ ...
seeing (measured with a Differential Image Motion Monitor placed on top of an tower) to be 1.3±0.8
arcsecond A minute of arc, arcminute (abbreviated as arcmin), arc minute, or minute arc, denoted by the symbol , is a unit of angular measurement equal to of a degree. Since one degree is of a turn, or complete rotation, one arcminute is of a tu ...
s. This is significantly worse than most major observatory sites, but similar to other observatories 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. ...
. However, they found (using
balloon A balloon is a flexible membrane bag that can be inflated with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, or air. For special purposes, balloons can be filled with smoke, liquid water, granular media (e.g. sand, flour or rice), ...
s) that 87% of turbulence was below 36 meters. A telescope built on a tower could rise above this "
boundary layer In physics and fluid mechanics, a boundary layer is the thin layer of fluid in the immediate vicinity of a Boundary (thermodynamic), bounding surface formed by the fluid flowing along the surface. The fluid's interaction with the wall induces ...
" and achieve excellent seeing. The boundary layer is at the
South Pole The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is the point in the Southern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True South Pole to distinguish ...
and may be as low as at Dome A. An earlier paper considered the site and concluded that "Dome C is the best ground-based site to develop a new astronomical observatory".
FAQ by the authors
)
This shows a measured superior seeing of 0.27 arcseconds, half as large as at Mauna Kea Observatory. This figure was taken with an instrument insensitive to near-ground turbulence and so it is comparable to the 0.35 arcseconds Agabi et al. measured for "free atmospheric seeing". The 2004 experiments to measure the astronomical conditions at the site were unattended, controlled by a computer system that had to supervise the generation of its own electricity using a jet-fuel powered
Stirling engine A Stirling engine is a heat engine that is operated by the cyclic expansion and contraction of air or other gas (the ''working fluid'') by exposing it to different temperatures, resulting in a net conversion of heat energy to mechanical Work (ph ...
. The computer, running
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
, communicated with the outside world using an
Iridium Iridium is a chemical element; it has the symbol Ir and atomic number 77. This very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum group, is considered the second-densest naturally occurring metal (after osmium) with a density ...
phone.


ESA research

Since Concordia Station is a prime space mission analogue, the
European Space Agency The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member International organization, international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 ...
conducts biomedical research there in collaboration with the French ( IPEV) and Italian ( ENEA/ PNRA) Antarctic programs. Living conditions upon Dome C simulate what Astronauts have to go through in long-duration spaceflights. To name a few of the common challenges that the Concordia crew and
Astronauts An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...
have to face, they both live in isolation and confinement, in different atmospheric pressure conditions, with an abnormal day/night cycle plus several effects on their everyday life, such as sleep difficulties. Obviously the above parameters influence not only physiology but also psychology. The European Space Agency ( ESA) hires a Medical Doctor each year to winterover at Concordia Station and facilitate biomedical experiments on the crew. These experiments are selected over a variety of tests proposed to ESA by European universities and participation from the rest of the crew is voluntary (and highly appreciated). It is important to mention that this research aims not only at improving living conditions for Astronauts in a future human journey to Mars, but the results are also applied directly on society - they help doctors devise therapies for patients with similar difficulties in Europe and elsewhere.


See also

* Belgica Subglacial Highlands *
Climate of Antarctica Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorol ...
* Concordia Station * dome A (or dome Argus) * dome F (or dome Fuji) * EPICA * Inaccessibility Pole * Law Dome * Ledoyom (Ice body) * List of mountains of Wilkes Land *
Pole of Cold Pole or poles may refer to: People *Poles (people), another term for Polish people, from the country of Poland * Pole (surname), including a list of people with the name * Pole (musician) (Stefan Betke, born 1967), German electronic music artist ...


References


External links


Another Dome C FAQ
(Guillaume Dargaud)

blog by Guillaume Dargaud
2nd Winterover at Concordia Station (2006)
blog by Eric Aristidi, LUAN (Laboratoire Universitaire d'Astrophysique de Nice)

''Institut Polaire Français - Paule Emile Victor'' (IPEV) and ''Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide'' (PNRA)
Dome C seeing, Nature Letter
Frequently Asked Questions about seeing at Dome C.
International Large Optical Telescope, is proposed as a 2m optical-quality telescope for Dome C

Michael C. B. Ashley

Site evaluation of E-ELT of ESO including this location.

OpenStreetMap

Alexei Rudoy. Прошлогодний снег. - Climate, ice, water, landscapes
{{Antarctic fields camp Ice caps of Antarctica Outposts of Antarctica Landforms of Wilkes Land