Polar Outreach Catalogue

The Italian Antarctic National Museum (MNA) preserve and distribute thousands of geological samples recovered from Antarctica during the expeditions of the Italian Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide (PNRA) since 1986. The collection includes rocks (more than 19 000 samples) and meteorites (1 200). Almost every rock sample has at least one thin section and a corresponding petrographic description. From 2008 MNA maintains also 10 000 aerial photo archives from U.S. aerial Antarctic mapping photographs bought from United States Antarctic Resource Center (USARC). All photographs have been scanned at high resolution 16 bit grey scale and archived in a 2TB database. In addition satellite images from various sources (Landsat, Ikonos, Aster, Envisat, Argon, Ers) have been catalogued. All the archives (rocks, meteorites, aerial photos and satellite images) are available through MNA website www.mna.it using a Google Earth based interface.