AU Outreach- Halley Station Campus
VITAL STATISTICS: Est. 1956, Students, researchers: 65
Named for Edmund Halley (discoverer of Halley's Comet) and located 12 km off the coast completely opposite University Peak and McMurdo, the Halley campus, like the larger Amundsen-Scott facility, is built on stilts to prevent snow drifts from isolating and burying it slowly. Students get to and from Halley in a number of ingenious ways (see video). The Station has contributed much to the international study of the Antarctic, serving as a research centre for meteorology, glaciology, seismology, radio astronomy, and geospace science. Critically, students at Halley study ozone depletion and atmospheric pollution, sea level rise and climate change, beginning ozone measurements immediately in 1956. Halley Station's major contribution to world ecology was by providing the evidence, in 1985, of ozone depletion through the human use of clauroflaurocarbons (CFCs) in aerosol. Backed up by AU researchers, this led to the banning of CFCs.
Not all glamour- students fixing Halley's undercarriage in a blizzard
Astronomy is also a major area of research at Halley. The campus houses a high definitinon radar, which serves as a node for a constellation of geophysical observatories ringing the installation. This set up allows researchers to monitor in 3-D the upper atmosphere over the South Pole.
