Exhibition of South Pole images

Herbert Ponting chronicled the expedition to the South Pole

A selection of photographs taken on Captain Robert Scott's ill-fated Antarctic expedition have gone on display at the University of Cambridge.

The photographs have been produced from Herbert Ponting's glass-plate negatives of the 1910-1912 expedition.

The university's Scott Polar Research Institute bought the images last year with a £533,000 Heritage Lottery grant.

The photographs depict the landscape and chronicles the scientific work and the day-to-day life of the expedition.

"Ponting's photographs of Antarctica remain among the most evocative images ever taken of the continent", said Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Polar Institute.

"In exhibiting these images in our Polar museum, we will able to project not only the huge scale of the Antarctic and its great ice sheet, but also the lives of those who were involved in the early exploration and scientific discoveries about an Antarctic environment."

The Polar Institute at the university was founded in 1920 as a memorial to Captain Scott and those who died with him on his final expedition to the Antarctic.

The photographs will be on display until 31 March 2006.