What color is Antarctica? |
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I remember the first meeting with the southern land. Early in the morning I went out on deck. It was overcast, heavy clouds hung over the ship, but a light yellowish stripe was burning directly on the course, in the south. A meteorology professor stood on the upper bridge, binoculars in hand. I went up to him. The professor pointed forward to the shining strip. - Antarctica, it turns out, is golden, - I was surprised. “Yes,” he said, “sunny. Above the glacier there is an area of increased pressure, a stable continental anticyclone. Let's sunbathe. Antarctica was several tens of miles away. The sea was almost cleared of ice, and the ship was making 13 knots. The glittering streak widened. Soon, through the binoculars, the outlines of a giant ice dome became clearly visible, its yellowish surface seemed to me not ice at all, but sandy.
Whalers sailing in south polar waters say they always see Antarctica as a distant golden dome shining on the horizon. It's like an image of Antarctica. And when you get close to the mainland, you see so many different pictures, close-ups, so many color shades, half-tones that the whole image crumbles. So the well-known saying is justified: "Great things are seen at a distance." The sea and ice are sensitive to the slightest changes in the weather, everything that happens in the sky. And the sky over Antarctica is special. The low polar sun paints the clouds in those amazing colors, which can only rarely be seen in our mid-latitudes at sunset. The colors of the sky are thrown down onto the glaciers, onto the water, and from this everything around becomes completely fabulous. Pinkish icebergs float across the blue sea, and in the distance, endless ice plains are engaged in a yellowish, sultry, desert fire. Blue volumetric shadows fall from the rocks. Kent's Greenlandic canvases involuntarily come to mind, although what you see here is completely different and still awaits its artistic embodiment. But as soon as the sun disappears, a whitish veil covers the mainland. Contrasts are smoothed out, shadows disappear. The cloudy sky merges with the icy land. And now the horizon is no longer visible, everything has dissolved in a milky blinding whiteness. This weather in Antarctica is called "white darkness". Airplane flights at this time are especially dangerous. “It's like flying in a bottle of milk,” the pilots say.
But not all winterers of the sixth continent see the Antarctic land. At stations located in Central Antarctica, among the endless glacial plain, such as our Vostok and the American Amundsen-Scott, Bird, you will not see either rocks or the sea. There is only snow and sky overhead. Even on the coast, on the ice shelves, there is snow and snow everywhere. The houses, set on the ice, are swept over the roofs after the first blizzards. Only pipes and grids of radio antennas stick out outside. Tractors, ATVs and airplanes have to be constantly dug up. To prevent them from getting lost in the snowy desert, they are painted red or orange.Bright spots in the snow are visible from afar, they involuntarily attract the eye, tired of the blinding whiteness of the snow. Researchers feel uncomfortable on ice shelves. The stations located in the oases - Molodezhnaya, Novolazarevskaya - are the promised land compared to the icy desert. And how the penguin colonies and seal rookeries revive the Antarctic landscape! From afar you see only black dots on the ice, but when you come closer, you will be surprised at the "outfits" of these animals. Take the emperor penguin. His back and sides, like polished black wood, shine with steel in the sun. The chest is like white silk, and orange feathers are at the neck and around the eyes. The seals are also very beautiful. It is difficult to pinpoint the color of their fur. In my opinion, it most of all resembles the color of thick bottle glasses, through the fragments of which everyone loves to look in childhood.
In winter, darkness thickens over the mainland. The world around us seems hostile. Overhead, a pale bluish flame flares up, giant silver aurora snakes wriggle across the firmament. Small beads of stars appear in the sky. And no matter how you look, you will not find here the familiar, swinging half the sky, the Big Dipper, instead of her - the alien, indifferent Southern Cross. And at all seasons of the year at the Antarctic stations there is no green color, the most lively and very necessary for a person. Over time, polar explorers develop a kind of “color hunger”, satisfied only in colored dreams, in which they dream of green herbs, the foliage of young birches, something that people yearn for in Antarctica. Vladimir Bardin. |
Those who have not been to Antarctica usually think that "everything is white, one ice and snow". But this is not true. The sixth continent is colorful in its own way.
The entire expedition poured out onto the deck and looked greedily at the sparkling continent. This is how I remember him for the rest of my life.
Only in the Antarctic oases, in any weather, there is a wide variety of colors. Oases are islands of rocks and lakes in an ocean of ice. A string of peeled, glacier-wounded, humpbacked hills. Brown and reddish, sometimes covered with white deposits of salt and bluish streaks of copper, gloomy rocks suddenly come to life in places where lichens grow, bright orange, lemon-yellow, velvety-black - surprisingly tenacious, tenacious clumps. Many polar explorers take stones with Antarctic "flowers" home as a keepsake.
Yes, in summer in Antarctica, the variety of colors, overflows of light is truly amazing. Indeed, you can get a great tan. Meteorologists have determined that there is no less solar radiation here than in the Black Sea resorts. The faces of the Antarctic polar explorers soon turn brick red. Beginners are first baked in the polar sun. Only the Antarctic summer is very fleeting ...
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