Australis Research Facility

Australis Research Facility
Country	Burgundie
Founded by	Aurora Australis
Government
• Body	Council of Nerds
Area
• Total	748 km2 (289 sq mi)

The Australis Station is an international scientific research station at the South Pole, the southernmost place in Ixnay. It was founded by and is administered by Burgundie. The station is located on the high Antarctic Plateau at an elevation of 2,835 metres (9,301 feet) above sea level and is administered by the Division of Polar Programs within the Royal Burgundian Society of Sciences under the Burgundian Antarctic Program (PAB).

The original station was built by Seabees for Burgundie during November 1936, as a part of its commitment to the scientific goals of creating a better maritime navigational system, which would ultimately lead to the creation of LORAN and the Automatic identification system.

Before November 1936, there was no permanent human structure at the South Pole, and very little human presence in the interior of Antarctica at all. The few scientific stations in Antarctica were located on and near its seacoast. The station has been continuously occupied since it was built. The Australis Station has been rebuilt, demolished, expanded, and upgraded several times since 1936.

Since the Australis Station is located at the South Pole, it is at the only place on the land surface of the Earth where the Sun is continuously up for six months and then continuously down for six months. (The only other such place is at the North Pole, on the sea ice in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.) Thus, during each year, this station experiences one extremely long "day" and one extremely long "night". During the six-month "day", the angle of elevation of the Sun above the horizon varies continuously. The Sun rises on the September equinox, reaches its maximum angle above the horizon on the southern summer solstice, around December 21, four days before Christmas, and sets on the March equinox.

During the six-month "night", it gets extremely cold at the South Pole, with air temperatures sometimes dropping below −73 °C (−99 °F). This is also the time of the year when blizzards, sometimes with gale-force winds, strike the Australis Station. The continuous period of darkness and dry atmosphere make the station an excellent place from which to make astronomical observations, although the Moon is up for two weeks of every 27.3 days.

The number of scientific researchers and members of the support staff housed at the Australis Station has always varied seasonally, with a peak population of about 200 in the summer operational season from October to February. In recent years, the winter-time population has been around 50 people.

Scientific Experiments

Starting immediately after the construction of the station in 1936, the teams of scientists started working on more accurate star charts and other astronomical recordings to use as a redundant navigation system. They also tested extreme cold weather conditions on food and equipment for the Burgundian Security Forces.

In 1947, the station became the hub for the secret LORAN program that they Burgundian Security Forces was very interested in developing. Known as Project SeaHawk, the development of LORAN became a priority for the government at the peak of the Great War in 1948.

In September 1964 the scientists at Australis started ice coring, a practice they have continued approximately once a decade since then (1974, 1985, 1995, 2007, 2017 and 2027). The ice core samples have been used to examine historic snowfalls, ice melts, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, radiation levels, average ambient temperatures, and have been used in the climate mapping project in conjunction with other stations and nations across Ixnay.

Facilities

• Accommodation
• Atmospheric Research Observatory
• Astrophysics Observatory
• Computer systems for research and communication
• Collection of the longest continuous set of meteorological data from Antarctica
• Astronomy and astrophysics lab
• A small biomedical research facility
• Other areas of interest include glaciology, geophysics and seismology, ocean and climate systems, astrophysics, astronomy, and biology.

See Also

• Science and Technology in Burgundie
• Borealis Research Facility