In the News: Early Buzz for Race to the End of the Earth

Friday, May 28 11:58 am

Race to the End of the Earth, the major new exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History which opens May 29 and chronicles Roald Amundsen’s and Robert Scott’s race to reach the South Pole, is already topping must-see lists for Memorial Day weekend.

“The moment you enter this race you will be transported into a world of…science, awesome victories, and ice cold tragedies,” raves Ricky Alvarez in his write-up on ToDoNY.net. “I won’t spoil the ending…instead, I recommend that you experience the adventure.”

Over on Wired.com’s GeekDad, Dave Giancaspro recommends that parents catch the exhibition on May 29 with a visit to the Museum’s NYC International Polar Festival, a family-friendly program that includes performances, talks, demonstrations, and the chance to meet modern-day polar scientists and explorers.

Other reviewers are cheering the interactive features of Race to the End of the Earth, a special draw for children. “With family-friendly displays that employ viewfinders and touch screens, as well as full-scale dioramas of different Antarctic camps, exhibit goers can experience the same thirst for knowledge that drove Amundsen and Scott so many years ago,” writes The Family Vacationist.

In Time Out New York Kids, Eileen Clarke praises this “compelling story of two competing South Pole expeditions” for “provid[ing] fascinating glimpses of Antarctica then and now.” And blogger Jennifer Desrochers calls the exhibition “both informative and beautiful,” adding that it includes “more than enough content geared towards kids to make the experience educational…but also a ton of in-depth coverage to keep adults engaged. It’s a definite ‘see it!’”

Race to the End of the Earth opens May 29. © AMNH/D. Finnin

Manhattanhenge Gives New Yorkers an Illuminating Sunset

Thursday, May 27 10:24 am

Sunset looking down 34th Street. One of two days when the sunset is exactly aligned with the grid of streets in Manhattan. Photo © Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2001.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, researches star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the Milky Way’s structure. He recently reminded sky-watchers about an upcoming New York City phenomenon, Manhattanhenge, “one of two days when the sunset is exactly aligned with the grid of streets in Manhattan.”

What will future civilizations think of Manhattan Island when they dig it up and find a carefully laid out network of streets and avenues? Surely the grid would be presumed to have astronomical significance, just as we have found for the pre-historic circle of large vertical rocks known as Stonehenge, in the Salisbury Plain of England. For Stonehenge, the special day is the summer solstice, when the Sun rose in perfect alignment with several of the stones, signaling the change of season.

For Manhattan, a place where evening matters more than morning, that special day comes on Sunday, May 30th this year, one of only two occasions when the Sun sets in exact alignment with the Manhattan grid, fully illuminating every single cross-street for the last fifteen minutes of daylight. The other day is Monday, July 12th. These two days give you a photogenic view with half the Sun above and half the Sun below the horizon—on the grid. The day after May 30th (Monday, May 31), and the day before July 12 (Sunday, July 11) will also give you Manhattanhenge moments, but instead you will see the entire ball of the Sun on the horizon—on the grid. My personal preference is the half-Sun.

To find out recommended times and locations around Manhattan to view this ”unique urban phenomenon,” read Tyson’s full post on the Hayden Planetarium blog.

‘The Competition Was On’: Curator MacPhee’s New Book on Polar Race

Wednesday, May 26 9:41 am

In June, 1910, Roald Amundsen left Norway on a ship called the Fram.  His stated plan: sail north to the Arctic. In October, Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott, leader of the highly publicized British expedition to the Antarctic, whose ship Terra Nova was then docked in Melbourne, received a terse telegram indicating the Fram had turned south to the Antarctic. Curator Ross D. E. MacPhee describes the fallout in his book Race to the End: Amundsen, Scott, and the Attainment of the South Pole.

It was vitally important for Scott to have his expedition seen as scientifically significant. To that end, he took along 12 researchers or scientists, including a bespectacled young Oxford graduate, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who paid £1,000 pounds (equivalent in buying power to $120,000 to $150,000 today) to join the team as assistant zoologist. These are his snow goggles, fitted with prescription lenses, atop a copy of his book The Worst Journey in the World, which includes a harrowing account of a side trip in search of emperor penguin eggs. It became an instant classic. © Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge

After reading the telegram Scott summoned Tryggve Gran, the young Norwegian ski expert appointed to the expedition on the recommendation of Fridtjof Nansen. Scott had hoped that Gran, as Amundsen’s fellow countryman, could help him make sense of the message. But little could be gleaned from the deliberately curt wording, sent according to plan by Leon Amundsen [the explorer’s brother] after Fram was well away from Madeira.

For a man like Amundsen, whose exploration career was built on a continuing cascade of firsts, there could be only one goal in Antarctica. As Scott told Gran, “Amundsen is acting suspiciously…In Norway he avoided me in every conceivable manner…Let me say it right out. Amundsen was too honorable to tell me lies to my face. It’s the pole he is after, all right.”

…As [Apsley Cherry-Garrard] later recollected,“The last we had heard of [Amundsen] was that he had equipped Nansen’s old ship, the Fram, for further exploration of the Arctic. This was only a feint. Once at sea, he had told his men that he was going south instead of north; and when he reached Madeira he sent this brief telegram, ‘I shall be at the South Pole before you.’ It also meant, though we did not appreciate it at the time, that we were up against a very big man.”

…The fact is that, whatever Scott may have said to influential backers about the vulgarity of racing for the pole, to the public he plainly and unequivocally stated that “the Pole was the main objective.” Of course, it only became an actual race when Amundsen and his men showed up; but others had been sending out trial balloons well before the Terra Nova expedition left for the south, and no one could have been in any doubt that, if there was to be any kind of competition for the pole on the Antarctic ice, Britain intended to get there first.

Newspapers had begun to trumpet Amundsen’s change of plans even before the Terra Nova had docked in Melbourne. Challenge had been served, and the competition for the South Pole was now very much on.

Reprinted with permission from Race to the End: Amundsen, Scott, and the Attainment of the South Pole © Ross D. E. MacPhee 2010, Sterling Innovation.

Orient Yourself to Watch Bees!

Tuesday, May 25 9:06 am

CARPENTER BEES These huge bees have no stripes, like this Xylocopa virginica spotted in Queens’ Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. © John Ascher

Starting May 25, Great Pollinator Project organizers will visit different locations throughout New York City to help citizen scientists get started watching bees this summer.

Learn more about the program at one of the orientations in each of the five boroughs the week:

Brooklyn: Brooklyn Botanic Garden on May 25, 6-8 pm

Queens: Alley Pond Environmental Center on May 25, 6-8 pm

Staten Island: Greenbelt Nature Center on May 26, 6-8 pm

Bronx: New York Botanical Garden on May 27, 6-8 pm

Manhattan: North Meadow Recreation Center in Central Park on May 27, 6-8 pm

Please RSVP.

If you cannot make one of the orientations, you can still sign up, read the directions, print the data collection sheets, and submit your data, all online.

With the information that you help gather about the distribution of solitary and social bees throughout the urban jungle, scientists affiliated with the Museum and with the Greenbelt Native Plant Center of the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation can plan to attract more bees to the city. Bees are the most important animal pollinator, and there are over 200 different species throughout the city. Read more »

Behind the Scenes at the New Exhibition: The Race Begins in 9 Days

Thursday, May 20 2:25 pm

Race to the End of the Earth recounts one of the most stirring tales of Antarctic exploration: the contest to reach the South Pole in 1911-1912. The exhibition focuses on the challenges that the two leaders — Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and British Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott — confronted as they undertook their journeys from the shores of the Ross Sea to the Pole and back.

Moving through the exhibition, visitors will find clues about the experiences of various members of Scott’s and Amundsen’s teams, see actual items of clothing and tools they used, and look in on life-sized models of rooms in Amundsen’s and Scott’s base camps–all against a spectacular backdrop of Aurora Australis, or the southern lights. Another section features a diorama of emperor penguins, the largest penguin species alive today and the subject of a dangerous expedition by three of Scott’s men to recover eggs for scientific study, while additional exhibits will acquaint visitors with scientists and staff at work in Antarctica today.

For a behind-the-scenes look at Race to the End of the Earth, check out this slideshow of Museum artists at work.