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SOUTH POLE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The southernmost point of the Earth's axis
Classified under:
Nouns denoting spatial position
Instance hypernyms:
pole (one of two antipodal points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects the Earth's surface)
Holonyms ("South Pole" is a part of...):
Antarctic continent; Antarctica (an extremely cold continent at the south pole almost entirely below the Antarctic Circle; covered by an ice cap up to 13,000 feet deep)
Derivation:
south-polar (at or near the south pole)
Context examples:
The studies indicate an average depth for the ice shell of 11 to 14 miles (18 to 22 kilometers), with a thickness of less than 3 miles (5 kilometers) at the south pole.
(Cassini Sees Heat Below the Icy Surface of Enceladus, NASA)
Researchers found that craters become up to 10% shallower near the north pole of Mercury and the south pole of the Moon, but not the north pole of the Moon.
(The Moon and Mercury May Have Thick Ice Deposits, NASA)
One outlier from the predicted shape model is the size of the large boulder near Bennu’s south pole.
(NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Discovers Water on Asteroid, NASA)
Previous observations indirectly found possible signs of surface ice at the lunar south pole, but these could have been explained by other phenomena, such as unusually reflective lunar soil.
(Ice Confirmed at the Moon's Poles, NASA)
Jupiter’s south pole also contains a central cyclone, but it is surrounded by five cyclones with diameters ranging from 3,500 to 4,300 miles (5,600 to 7,000 kilometers) in diameter.
(Jupiter’s Jet-Streams Are Unearthly, NASA)
The great circle on the celestial sphere midway between the celestial poles (the projection of the north and south pole onto the celestial sphere).
(Celestial equator, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)
IceCube is an array of 5,160 optical sensors, each roughly two feet in diameter, deeply encased within a cubic kilometer of very clear Antarctic ice near NSF's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
(Antarctic detector offers first look at how Earth stops high-energy neutrinos in their tracks, National Science Foundation)
Data collected by NASA's Juno spacecraft using its Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument point to a new heat source close to the south pole of Io that could indicate a previously undiscovered volcano on the small moon of Jupiter.
(NASA Juno data indicate another possible volcano on Jupiter moon Io, NASA)
Auroras at Earth's poles (known as the aurora borealis at the North Pole and aurora australis at the South Pole) occur when the energetic particles blown out from the Sun (the solar wind) interact with and heat up the gases in the upper atmosphere.
(Jupiter's Atmosphere Heats up under Solar Wind, NASA)
In decades prior, major British expeditions had attempted to be the first to reach the North and South Poles only to come in second place behind the Americans (Robert Peary's expedition to the North Pole) and the Norwegians (Roald Amundsen's expedition to the South Pole).
(Everest, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
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