IGY Bulletin, Number 1, July 1957 - Reports from other countries

Finally, here is a summary of the last article from the first issue of the IGY Bulletin (along with some philatelic extras). I'm planning/hoping that in September I can catch up with the August and September 1957 issues. This is the first of occasional articles reporting on the IGY activities of other countries.

Australia

The article briefly describes various scientific activities planned for the Antarctic IGY stations at Macquarie Island, Mawson, and Davis. These stations are listed in the Wikipedia list of Antarctic stations I referred to before, including Davis and Mawson as Antarctic stations proper, and Macquarie Island as a sub-Antarctic station. The sub-Antarctic is a region located roughly at latitudes between 46° and 60° south of the Equator. The sub-Antarctic region includes many islands in the southern parts of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans; Macquarie Island is shown in the map below. Davis and Dawson are both shown on the map of Antarctic stations we looked at before.

Map of Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic (antarctica.gov.au)

Mawson was named in honor of Australian geologist and polar explorer Douglas Mawson. Sir Douglas (not to be confused with the Sir Douglas Quintet) first opened the base at Macquarie Island in 1911. He was honored on a stamp in my collection for the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT - a part of East Antarctica claimed and administered by the Australian Antarctic Division) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition.

Scott #L7 (1961)

The L designation is not one of the standard Scott stamp classification categories. I don't know what it designates, but I'm guessing something referring to the fact that the AAT is just an Antarctic claim, not internationally recognized as Australian land (which is a story for another day). AAT stamps can be used in mainland Australia as well.

Have a look at the current web page for the Australian Antarctic Program.

Sweden

The Swedish ship Lommaren carried a neutron monitor as part of an effort to better locate the geomagnetic equator and the latitudinal dependence of cosmic rays. The geomagnetic pole and equator are tilted (to a first order) relative to geographic coordinates. This effort was complicated when a solar disturbance affected cosmic ray fluxes, since expansion of the heliomagnetic field causes a decrease in the cosmic ray flux at the Earth's surface. 

Sweden, by the way, did not issue an IGY stamp. Its stamps for 1957 and 1958 were not that interesting, unless you are a big fan of King Gustav VI Adolf.

United Kingdom

In preparation for IGY atmospheric measurements, British Skylark rockets were being fired at the Woomera Range in the outback of Australia. Woomera was originally established in response to the U2 missile program of Nazi Germany. England was too densely populated to locate such a range. Woomera, the largest land-based test range in the Western world, is about the same size as all of England.

As this article from the The Postal Museum of Britain explains, the UK did not issue an IGY stamps. The idea was considered, designs were submitted, but it was decided that too many stamps were already on the docket.

Design proposed for a UK IGY stamp, the Queen looking on as always