AirPano’s Antarctica Photos: Penguins, Icebergs and the Peninsula Islands

Penguins pairing up on the rocks, seals dozing on a stony beach, a ship dwarfed by a wall of ice: AirPano’s Antarctic collection shows the continent at every scale. The Russian team, best known for aerial 360-degree panoramas, sailed to the islands off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula and came back with a gallery full of colour and character.

AirPano’s Antarctic expedition

AirPano is a team of Russian photographers who specialise in spherical panoramas shot from helicopters and drones. Their Antarctic project, presented on the AirPano Antarctica site, combines two virtual tours, a 360-degree video and a film about the voyage.

The still photographs, shared widely through Bored Panda, move between wide aerial views and close wildlife portraits. The team’s captions are short and affectionate: “Penguin love”, “Lovely couple of seals”, “Friendly sea elephant”.

Gourdin Island and Astrolabe Island

Two named places anchor the collection, and both were discovered by the French explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville during his 1837–40 expedition.

Gourdin Island lies about 2 kilometres north of Prime Head, the northernmost tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. It covers 124 hectares and is named after Ensign Jean Gourdin of the ship Astrolabe. It is a major penguin site, with about 14,000 breeding pairs of Adélie penguins and more than 550 pairs of gentoos.

Astrolabe Island, named after Dumont d’Urville’s ship, sits in the Bransfield Strait about 14 nautical miles north-west of Cape Ducorps on the Trinity Peninsula. It is roughly 5.6 kilometres long, and its north-eastern end rises into steep pyramid-shaped peaks known as the Dragons Teeth.

Penguins, seals and sea elephants

One of the best moments in AirPano’s story happened on a beach: a woman was lying on the shore when a young elephant seal came up and began rubbing its head against her. It is easy to see why the image became a favourite.

Southern elephant seals are the largest seals on Earth. Adult bulls reach 4.6 to 5.8 metres and weigh 3,000 to 3,700 kilograms, four or five times more than females. They breed mainly on subantarctic islands such as South Georgia and come ashore in summer to moult, and they are extraordinary divers, regularly hunting at 400 to 1,000 metres and recorded as deep as 2,388 metres.

Visiting the Antarctic Peninsula

Almost all visitors reach Antarctica the way AirPano did, by ship to the peninsula. Most cruises leave from Ushuaia in Argentina and cross the Drake Passage, and the season runs from November to March, the southern summer. Tourism has grown fast: by 2025 about 124,000 cruise visitors a year were travelling south.

To protect the wildlife and landscape, landings are tightly controlled. Ships normally put 100 people ashore at a time, and vessels carrying more than 500 passengers may not land anyone at all. Before you go, read the IAATO’s visitor guidance and follow your expedition team: give animals space and let them choose how close to come, as the curious elephant seal did.

More from Antarctica

Continue with Kalle Ljung’s Antarctic aerial film, or explore a very different photographic record in the recovered Ross Sea Party images.

Related reading:

• McMurdo Sound: Ice, Wildlife and Antarctic Research
• Martin Bailey’s Antarctic Icebergs: Natural Forms and Imagined Buildings
• Blood Falls, Antarctica: Iron-Rich Brine at Taylor Glacier
• Gentoo Penguins at Neko Harbour: When a Glacier View Changes Scale
• West Antarctic Glacier Retreat: What the 2014 Research Actually Found
• Antarctic Condition 1 Weather: The View through a Station Door
• Antarctic Icebergs in Motion: Drift, Collapse and Meltwater

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