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Current Weather Conditions for Palmer Station, Antarctica:
Journal Entries
2005-06
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| Jump to a specific journal entry by Marianne Kaput: | ||
| August 2005 | 23 | |
| October 2005 | 31 | |
| December 2005 | 15 29 30 31 | |
| January 2006 | 1 3 4 5 7 9 10-11 12-14 15 16-17 18-19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 | |
| February 2006 | 1 2 5 6-8 10 | |
| Click here to access journal entries by Giancarlo Lopez-Martinez or Luke Sandro. | ||
December 30, 2005 - Punta Arenas, Chile (52° S Latitude)
Spanish phrase of the day: Buenos Dias, which means Good Day!
Today I got to see my first penguins other than those in the zoo. We took a van to the Turis-Otway wildlife preserve which is an hour's drive up the coast in an area called Patagonia. Long ago in the Andes Mountains of Chile, there lived some very tall people with big feet. Most of the Chilean people are quite short. The name Patagonia makes sense because Pata means large foot in Spanish, meaning this was the land of the large-footed people. The area where the penguins were was a grassy plain, so there were no trees — just lots and lots of flat land covered with grass. There were sheep and a large bird that looked just like an ostrich, only smaller. They are called Lesser Rheas or Nandu in Spanish. See how large they are? Imagine how large the eggs must be!
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It was such a special treat when we saw our first Magellan penguin. There was a family of four with their two chicks. They acted as if we weren't even there. It was fun to watch the parents pick at each others feathers talking back and forth as if to say, "Let me fix you up a little, your feathers are such a mess!" Then the chicks came out of their little nest built into a little hill, only to be scolded and shooed back in by their parents. Just like the Emperor Penguin of the movie March of the Penguins, the Magellan penguins return to the place where they were born to lay their eggs while both parents take turns caring for the egg. Both parents also share the responsibility of raising and feeding the chicks. The chicks are the cutest little balls of gray fur. They don't get feathers until they are adults. I could have watched them all afternoon.
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We noticed that the sun rises a lot earlier here than it does in Ohio and that it does not get dark until about 10:30 in the evening:
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Wonder why? Well, areas experiencing summer are tilted closer to the sun, closer to its heat. That area is also experiencing longer periods of daylight as well. Try to simulate or build a model of what is happening here using a ball and a flashlight in a dark room. Mark several important parts of your model. For example, put a sticker where Punta Arenas would be and tilt that part of the earth so that it has more surface area lit by the sun (flashlight). Then slowly rotate the ball to copy the Earth’s rotation, which is what causes day and night. Then observe how much longer the area having summer has daylight compared to the area tilted away. Adjust your model so that you understand why the very southern hemisphere has very long periods of sunlight during the summer. How would you expect the daylight to change in the winter months? Use your model to support your hypothesis.
The Chileans even eat at different times. Restaurants don't serve dinner until 8 pm, much later that the usual 6 pm dinner time which is very common in the U.S. Even the money system is quite different. Five hundred pesos (their currency) are equal to about 1 U.S. dollar. Check out our dinner bill for 7 people. How much was the bill in dollars? Euros?
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- Marianne Kaput