Aspland Island
island in Antarctica

Aspland Island is a small island 7.4 km (4 nmi) west of Gibbs Island in the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. The name dates back to at least 1821.
Moonlight Point (61°27′S 55°56′W) is the northwest point of Aspland Island. It was so named by a Joint Services Expedition to the Elephant Island Group (JSEEIG) party canoeing from O'Brien Island to Aspland Island on January 3, 1977, because the point appeared silhouetted against a full moon. The name was approved by the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee in 1980.
Birds
The island forms part of the Aspland Island and Eadie Island Important Bird Area, identified as such by BirdLife International because both islands support large colonies of chinstrap penguins and southern fulmars.
See also
List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands
References
This article incorporates public domain material from "Aspland Island". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey.
“Aspland Island” enters the record as island in Antarctica. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Aspland, Island and island can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Aspland Island” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Aspland, Island and island provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4808114. Authority coordinates are -61.467, -55.917. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1821, 1977 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aspland Island” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.