McMurdo Station (USA)

McMurdo Station is an American scientific base in Ross Island, Antarctica. The headquarters of Antarctic Vexillological Association is located on the base, so, to celebrate this flag-friendly place, I thought it could be interesting to design a flag to the station.

My base for the design was the American flag, seen on uniforms and, if I'm not wrong, on some poles (no pun intended). Here's my design:


The orangish shade of red is helped by the fact that fluorescent colors are the most visible in the white vastness and, among them, orange is the color that best contrasts with blue. The very dark blue represents winter's eternal night, and the white represents summer's eternal day. The Southern Cross is the a symbol of the Southern Hemisphere and, apparently, it's how it looks on Antarctic.

I like the design, althought it's too generic: could be used by any US base in Antarctic continent!

Comments are suggestions are welcome. Do you know how to make this flag more distinctive?
Is there an astronomer that can confirms if this is the correct display of Southern Cross on South pole?

Queen Elizabeth Land (United Kingdom)

Today it was announced that part of British Antarctic Territory will be named Queen Elizabeth Land, in occasion of Diamond Jubilee. It's a good opportunity to imagine how this land's flag should look like. Samuel McKittrick, in his own blog, showed his proposals. Now I'll show the mine; it doesn't necessarily means I support the British monarchy or its claim in Antarctic lands —  it's s blog about Vexillology, not Politics.

Like the other flags of British oversea territories, it'll probably adopt a British ensign with with a local coat of arms. Just clarifying: Queen Elizabeth Land will be a region of a territory, not a territory itself. After some tests, I decided for this coat of arms:

[Click to zoom]
The background is formed by white and blue lozenges. Firstly, it emulates diamond shape (a reference to Diamond Jubille). It also is used because it slightly resembles the ice. There's a blue triangular division, with royal cypher on it, as reference to the person whom the land is named for. The cypher contains the crown, so I don't thought it's needed to crown the shield.

After that, I came to the flags in themselves. First, a white ensign, like the British Antarctic Territory flag:

In the other hand, if a blue ensign was preferred, I preview it'd look like the following:

It was only a supposition training; I don't know even if this land will ever adopt a flag.

Please, leave a comment, and help enriching the blog.
I suggest the visit to Samuel McKittrick's post about the same issue. Click here.