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Meet Our Crew


Our Antarctic crew: (from left) Ron Hipschman, Lisa Strong-Aufhauser, and Mary Miller.

For the International Polar Year, Exploratorium crews traveled to the Arctic and Antarctica to produce live Webcasts with polar scientists, and to provide behind-the-scenes glimpses into what life’s like while conducting field research in extreme environments. Follow our adventures on the top of the Greenland Ice Sheet; in an ice cave in Barrow, Alaska; at an under-ice neutrino telescope at the South Pole; and more.

Antarctica

Click to meet the Antarctic team
In December 2008, the Exploratorium crew traveled to the icy continent to chase down Antarctic scientists at field sites as they studied penguin nesting, ozone hole shredding, ice sheet slipping and sliding, and more. We produced live Webcasts, video dispatches, panoramic photographs, written stories, and Twitter blogs from The Ice.
Greenland

Click to meet the Greenland team
An Exploratorium videographer and writer traveled to Greenland in summer 2008 to interview scientists studying the melting Greenland Ice Sheet. Along the way, we discovered how fast ice-sheet lakes can drain, experienced a calving glacier, and photographed a tiny orchid that survives Arctic winters—all while being eaten alive by swarms of hungry mosquitoes.
Alaska

Click to meet the Alaska team
Our Arctic coverage is centered largely in Barrow, Alaska. In summer 2007, we sent a crew to meet and interview scientists doing research in the area, and to get a feel for the people and the place. In addition to researchers, they spoke with townspeople; sampled caribou, seal, and whale; walked through the tundra; and even woke up in the middle of the night, attempting, unsuccessfully, to see an aurora.

In late May 2008, our team visited Barrow again, this time to produce a series of live Webcasts on archeology, ice, climate change, geology, oceanography, and more.