Summary
Two major astronomical experiments are underway at the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The first is the South Pole Telescope, a 10m sub-millimetre telescope de- signed to measure primary and secondary anisotropies in the CMBR, with the aim of placing constraints on the equation of state for dark energy. The second is the IceCube neutrino observatory, which will be a cubic kilometre array designed to image sources of high energy neutrinos. The French-Italian Concordia station at Dome C is now complete and operating through the winter. Site testing is underway through the Concordia-astro program. At Dome A, the summit of the Antarctic plateau, China are establishing a new station, and deployed the Australian-built PLATO observatory there for the austral winter of 2008, obtaining the first site testing data from that location. This was a part of an International Polar Year program. Japan started site evaluation at Dome F in 2007. The long duration ballooning program run from the US McMurdo Station continues to grow, with multiple programs now able to fly balloons simultaneously. SCAR, the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research, have established astronomy as an official Scientific Research Program, one of five such designated scientific programs. The IAU’s application to join SCAR was recognised at the Moscow meeting of SCAR delegates in July 2008, making the IAU now the 9th scientific union member of SCAR. SCAR coordinated the International Polar Year, which ran through 2007–08.