Observation Hill is a steep 230 m hill adjacent to McMurdo Station (WAP USA-22) in Antarctica and commonly called “Ob Hill” It is frequently climbed to get good viewing points across the continent. Regular clear skies give excellent visibility. But 
Observation Hill is also known for being the site where a Cross was erected as memorial to Robert Falcon Scott and his South Pole Party.
In 1972, the cross was declared as one of the initial Historic Sites and Monuments in Antarctica by the Antarctic Treaty signatories, as HSM-20.
Just to breafly retrace the history
After their deaths in early 1912, the last members of Robert Falcon Scott‘s party were found by a search party led by the surgeon Dr. Edward L. Atkinson. The relief party took their photographic film, scientific specimens, and other materials. The bodies of Scott and his men were left in their tent, and later parties could not locate the campsite, since that area had been covered in snow. A century of storms and snow have covered the cairn and tent, which are now encased in the Ross Ice Shelf as it slowly inches towards the Ross Sea. The search party returned to their base camp in McMurdo Sound to await the relief ship.
After it arrived, they worked to build a memorial: a nine-foot wooden cross, inscribed with the names of the fatal party and the final line of the Alfred Tennyson poem “Ulysses“, which reads “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
On 22 January 1913, after a difficult two-day sledge journey, the cross was erected on the summit of Observation Hill, overlooking the camp and facing out towards the “Barrier”, the Ross Ice Shelf, on which Scott‘s party had died.
The picture above, shows New Zealanders from Scott Base (WAP NZL-Ø1)grouped around the Memorial Cross during the 51 years commemoration (Season1963-1964)
Thanks and credit to: Antarctica New Zealand Pictorial Collection Antarctica NZ (recollect.co.nz)
This “brief life” Research site, was very singular! It was set on Pobeda Ice Island (original Russian name “Oстров Победы” aka Victory Island) in the Mawson Sea, about 160 km off the coast of Queen Mary Land, East Antarctca.
winter solstice in Antarctica, the crew at Concordia Research Station (WAP MNB-Ø3) are slowly welcoming the return of sunlight. 
In a document sent to the Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty 
regarding the “Italian activities in Antarctica before the establishment of the PNRA” (and shown during the Consultative Meeting in Paris last June 2021) there is a paragraph concerning the expedition of 
The largest and only independent Italian Antarctic Expedition was led by Renato Cepparo in 1976-77 to the South Shetland Islands by the Norwegian ship P/V Rig Mate.
The area still keeps the name Italia Valley.
Remains of Giacomo Bove Station (Cepparo’s Team did operate HF radio using I1SR/P callsign)- Picture taken in 1998.
Pic on the Left shows;
A real honor for me, for the relatives of Renato Cepparo and Giacomo Bove as well as for students, families, associations, partners and patrons. The Giacomo Bove and Maranzana (AT) Association and the Cultural Adri-Antartica Association, founders of the actually constituted National Consortium. All together, say thank you to all the supporters, to friends and families. Thanks to the late H.E. Ambassador Arduino Raimondo Fornara, yp Commander Gen. Amedeo Amedeo G. Cristofaro, to H.E. Ambassador Pier Francesco Zazo, graduated with prof. Silvio Zavatti.»
McMurdo Station has no permanent residents — just a revolving door of visiting scientists and temporary personnel, some of whom live there for up to a year at a time. At its most populous, typically during the summer, it houses about 1,000 people.
The Unión Glacier, located at 79º 46’ South, 83º 24’ West, is a large glacier converted since 2014 into the Base Camp.
In 2013 during the 68th Chilean Antarctic Campaign (ECA 50), the Polar Stations Arturo Parodi Alister (WAP CHL-14) –Picture here on the Right shows the entrance of Arturo Parodi Alister Base – established at Patriot Hills in 1996, and Antonio Huneeus Gana, were dismantled. Their equipments moved to the corridors of the future station, the Unión Glacier joint scientific polar station.
Japan will soon begin working toward construction of a new Antarctic base to continue with research into climate change over the past 1 million years.
Endurance22 will launch early next year with aim of locating and surveying wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance in the Weddell Sea.
There is a very important person, leading expert of the Russian Antarctic Expedition of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, one of the few people to receive the Order “For Naval Merit” (Russian: Орден «За морские заслуги»), a state decoration of the Russian Federation bestowed for excellence in military or economic maritime endeavours, Awarded for Excellence in worldwide oceanic activities in favour of Russian military and economic security.
