Halzen Mesa () is an oblong islandlike

mesa A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill, which is bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and stands distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas characteristically consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks capped by ...

, long and rising to , that is the largest and easternmost of three mesas in the

Insel Range The Insel Range () is a series of ice-free flat-topped peaks resembling islands which rise above the surrounding terrain and separate McKelvey Valley from Balham Valley, in Victoria Land, Antarctica. It was so named by the Victoria University of We ...

McMurdo Dry Valleys The McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of largely snow-free valleys in Antarctica, located within Victoria Land west of McMurdo Sound. The Dry Valleys experience extremely low humidity and surrounding mountains prevent the flow of ice from nearby ...

, in

Victoria Land Victoria Land is a region in eastern Antarctica which fronts the western side of the Ross Sea and the Ross Ice Shelf, extending southward from about 70°30'S to 78°00'S, and westward from the Ross Sea to the edge of the Antarctic Plateau. It ...

. The upper surface is relatively level but the periphery is marked by abrupt cliffs that rise 500 to 600 m above the floor of Barwick Valley and

McKelvey Valley McKelvey Valley () is a valley between the western part of the Olympus Range and the Insel Range, in Victoria Land, Antarctica. It was named by the Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition (VUWAE) (1958–59) for B.C. McKelvey, a geolo ...

. Named by the

Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (ACAN or US-ACAN) is an advisory committee of the United States Board on Geographic Names responsible for recommending commemorative names for features in Antarctica. History The committee was established ...

in 2005 after

Francis Halzen Francis Louis Halzen (born 23 March 1944 in Tienen, Belgium) is a Belgian particle physicist. He is the Hilldale and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Director of its Institute for Elementary Parti ...

, Physics Department,

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin. Founded when Wisconsin achieved statehood in 1848, UW–Madison ...

, who in 1988 conceived of AMANDA, the Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array at

Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station is the United States scientific research station at the South Pole of the Earth. It is the southernmost point under the jurisdiction (not sovereignty) of the United States. The station is located on the ...

;

United States Antarctic Program The United States Antarctic Program (or USAP; formerly known as the United States Antarctic Research Program or USARP and the United States Antarctic Service or USAS) is an organization of the United States government which has presence in the A ...

principal investigator in a project to build the

IceCube Neutrino Observatory The IceCube Neutrino Observatory (or simply IceCube) is a neutrino observatory constructed at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. The project is a recognized CERN experiment (RE10). Its thousands of sensors are located under t ...

at the South Pole Station in six field seasons beginning 2004–05.

References

Landforms of Victoria Land {{VictoriaLand-geo-stub