Thurston Island

Template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / image missing

The Thurston Island (English Thurston Iceland ) is a facility located in the Southern Ocean, ice-covered, rugged and glaciated island off the north west coast of the Antarctic mainland.

The uninhabited island stretches over 215 kilometers from east to west. It is crossed in this direction by the Walker Mountains and is up to 90 kilometers wide. The area is 15,700 square kilometers and the maximum height of 750 meters. The island is located on the western margin of the Bellingshausen Sea. West of the island begins the Amundsen Sea. It is the third largest island in the Antarctic after Alexander I Island and Berkner Island.

The Thurston Island was discovered on February 27, 1940 from an airplane of Richard E. Byrd from an Antarctic expedition and named by him after W. Harris Thurston, a New York textile manufacturer and promoter of Antarctic expeditions.

At first they thought Thurston on a peninsula, which was corrected only in 1960 when another expedition. It was found that the Thurston Island is separated completely through the western part of the Abbott Ice Shelf, the Peacock sound, but from the mainland, more precisely of the Eight Coast in Ellsworthland, a region in Westantarktika.