Streetview revisits the Antarctic

Following on from the Amazon river safari and its whistlestop tour of certain Antarctic areas in 2010, Google's Streetview has now added a host of new images to its library, making it possible to further explore the region. Now available are shots of Shackleton, Scott's Hut, the South Pole telescope, Cape Royds Adélie Penguin Rookery and both the real and symbolic South Pole.

The announcement was made by Google technical programmer, Alex Starns in a blog post: “We worked with this technology because of its portability, reliability and ease-of-use (our Street View trikes wouldn't be much use in the snow).”

The images which can be seen individually using Streetview, or one after the other in the following video, were captured using a fisheye lens to create the 360 degree views. They offer exterior and interior shots of the locations, making for a very candid view of some of the most remote and inhospitable regions of our planet. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7VzVTNN6DA']

As Starns points out, while the icy views of the pole are impressive in themselves, the shots inside Scott's Hut are some of the most interesting. “They were built to withstand the drastic weather conditions only for the few short years that the explorers inhabited them, but remarkably, after more than a century, the structures are still intact, along with well-preserved examples of the food, medicine, survival gear and equipment used during the expeditions. Now anyone can explore these huts and get insight into how these men lived for months at a time.”

KitGuru Says: Are there any parts of the world you'd like to see on StreetView?

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