McKay Valley () is the central of three largely ice-free valleys that trend east from

Midnight Plateau Midnight Plateau () is a prominent ice-covered plateau, over high, forming the central feature of the Darwin Mountains in Antarctica. It is the only area of snow accumulation in the Darwin Mountains. The plateau was discovered by the Victoria Univ ...

in the

Darwin Mountains The Darwin Mountains is a group of mountains between the Darwin and Hatherton glaciers in Antarctica. Discovered by the British National Antarctic Expedition (1901–04) and named for Major Leonard Darwin, at that time Honorary Secretary of the R ...

of Antarctica. It was named after physicist Christopher P. McKay, of the

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

Moffett Field, California Moffett Federal Airfield , also known as Moffett Field, is a joint civil-military airport located in an unincorporated part of Santa Clara County, California, United States, between northern Mountain View and northern Sunnyvale. On November 10, ...

, who carried out investigations in the

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 ...

concerning micrometeorology, thickness of ice in frozen lakes, stability of ground ice, in 15 austral summers beginning in about 1980.

References

Valleys of Oates Land {{OatesLand-geo-stub