Berkner Island
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Berkner Island or Berkner Ice Rise or Hubley Island is a high and completely ice-covered island about 320 km (200 miles) long and 135 km (85 miles) wide in Antarctica, with an area of 43873.1 km². Berkner Island is located at , being the southernmost island of the world, a title that is sometimes incorrectly awarded to Ross Island. The island rises to 975 m (3,200 ft) and separates Ronne Ice Shelf from the Filchner Ice Shelf. It is characterized by two domes, Reinwarthhöhe in the north, at , and Thyssenhöhe in the south, at . Berkner Island is about 150 km west of Luitpold Coast, Coats Land, the closest mainland of Eastern Antarctica. 17 km off the northwest corner of Berkner Island is Hemmen Ice Rise.
Berkner Island was discovered by members of the United States-International Geophysical Year (US-IGY) party at Ellsworth Station under the leadership of Capt. Finn Ronne, United States Navy Reserve (USNR), during the 1957-1958 season. Berkner Island was named by the United States Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (US-ACAN) for American physicist Lloyd Berkner, engineer with the Byrd Antarctic Expedition (1928-1930).
Since 1990, Berkner Island has been a jumping off point for a number of long distance polar expeditions.
In the 1994/1995 field season the British Antarctic Survey, Alfred Wegener Institute and Forschungsstelle Fur Physikalische Glaziologie (University of Munster) cooperated in a project drilling ice cores on the North and South Domes of Berkner Island.
