Bellingshausen_Sea_shaded_and_IHO_proposal

The Bellingshausen Sea is an area along the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula between 57°18'W and 102°20'W, west of

Alexander Island Alexander Island, which is also known as Alexander I Island, Alexander I Land, Alexander Land, Alexander I Archipelago, and Zemlja Alexandra I, is the largest island of Antarctica. It lies in the Bellingshausen Sea west of Palmer Land, Antarc ...

, east of Cape Flying Fish on

Thurston Island Thurston Island is an ice-covered, glacially dissected island, long, wide and in area, lying a short way off the northwest end of Ellsworth Land, Antarctica. It is the third-largest island of Antarctica, after Alexander Island and Berkner Isl ...

, and south of Peter I Island (there the southern ''Vostokkysten''). In the south are, from west to east, Eights Coast,

Bryan Coast Bryan Coast is a portion of the coast of Antarctica along the south shore of the Bellingshausen Sea between Pfrogner Point and the northern tip of the Rydberg Peninsula. To the west is Eights Coast, and to the east is English Coast. The eastern e ...

and English Coast (west part) of West Antarctica. To the west of Cape Flying Fish it joins the Amundsen Sea. Bellingshausen Sea has an area of and reaches a maximum depth of . It contains the undersea plain Bellingshausen Plain. It takes its name from Admiral Thaddeus Bellingshausen, who explored in the area in 1821. In the late Pliocene Epoch, about 2.15 million years ago, the Eltanin asteroid (about 1-4 km in diameter) impacted at the edge of the Bellingshausen sea (at the

South Pacific Ocean South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþaz ...

). This is the only known impact in a deep-ocean basin in the world.

References

External links

NASA Bellinghausen Sea satellite photo

Bellinghausen Sea climatological low pressure system
{{coord, 71, S, 85, W, scale:10000000_source:GNIS, display=title Seas of the Southern Ocean Antarctic region