Antarctic Circle - What is it?



Horse at the Antarctic Circle star pickets

Now I don't know about you, but up until I came to Antarctica, I had never given any thought to,"what is the Antarctic Circle?" I mean, everyone sort of thinks about the equator being at 0 degrees latitude, and it's roughly the half way mark on the earth. But, the Antarctic and for that matter, the Arctic circles are located at about, 66 degrees 33'. What bright spark thought up this number. It's like, "oh, lets just jam a peg in here, I'm sick of carrying all these star pickets anyway, its was bad enough pegging out that other circle up north...!" Well, I'm happy with that story. No, well the truth is that the Arctic and Antarctic circles define the latitudes from the poles where there is at least one day during mid summer when the sun does not dip below the horizon and during mid winter the sun does not rise above the horizon. Now, to piss the peg carrying boys off some more, the circles latitude are constantly moving. "Oh brother, now we gotta take all them pegs out again." The reason is that the earth "wobbles" on its axis. This makes the tilt on the axis vary thus, making the latitudes move up and down. This happens in a cycle know as the Milankovitch Cycles. They last from between 23 and 100 thousand years. Now there's plenty of time to shift the pegs because in about 10000 years, the circles will be at 68 degrees. Sigh, thank god for that...!

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Watch this Video on a Few Ice Bergs