Ridge A

Ridge A is a remote site on the Antarctic Plateau, identified in 2009 as the best-suited location on the surface of the Earth for astronomical research.

About Ridge A

Sitting at an altitude of 4,053 metres, Ridge A lies roughly 1,000 kilometres from the South Pole and 144 kilometres southeast of Dome A, within the Australian Antarctic Territory. The site was identified by a team of Australian and American scientists searching for the calmest, clearest skies on the planet, with the project's team leader describing it as "so calm there's almost no wind or weather there at all."

Telescopes & research

Ridge A hosts the HEAT telescope, a 60-centimetre far-infrared instrument operated as a collaboration between the University of Arizona and the University of New South Wales. HEAT observes the Milky Way in the 0.5-2 THz spectroscopic bands, taking advantage of the site's exceptionally low water vapour and minimal atmospheric disturbance. Researchers have suggested that images taken through a telescope here could rival those from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Location & getting there

Ridge A sits on the Antarctic Plateau, one of the most remote and extreme environments on Earth, with average winter temperatures around -70°C. It lies within a calm point in the atmosphere where winds flowing off the continent appear to originate, part of a stratospheric vortex that keeps ground-level air unusually still.

Visiting Ridge A

Ridge A is not a public tourist destination; it is an extreme, uninhabited research site accessible only to scientific expeditions equipped for Antarctic conditions.

See your named star from here

Ridge A's exceptional clarity means it is one of the best places on Earth from which a telescope could resolve the coordinates of a named star. Explore your star's position in our star catalogue.