Sunset

This past week we celebrated the first of the three big holidays down here, Sunset. The other two are Mid-winter (mid-June) and Sunrise (mid- to late September). The sun hasn't actually set yet, but it is in the process of going down. If it weren't for the fact that there has been a week-long storm going on, we'd be seeing some pretty colors right about now.

This is what it looked like the day we celebrated Sunset

This is what it has looked like every day since

We kicked off the festivities with a surprise from JP, the station plumber. He brought a couple a large chunks of ice from the Barn Glacier on Ross Island. It is about 70,000 years old. He chopped it up for putting in drinks and then we toasted to a good winter season.

JP taking a chisel to the glacial ice

The ice had huge bubbles in it which made pretty much any drink start to fizz, which was pretty cool.
The next day's celebrations started off with lunch in the green house, with pretty much all the veggies provided by the green house. Fun fact: just about all the plants in the green house are edible.

Lunch time: Apples with pumpkin dip, deviled egg, tuna
canape thing, kale pesto. The kale pesto and the tuna were
my favorites.

L to R: Guy, Cynthia and Heather enjoy a green house lunch in
in the green house.

Then we had an informational scavenger hunt, hosted by Heather, the station science leader and an officer of NOAA Corp. It was a good way to learn a bit about Antarctic and station history and trivia.

Then, a fancy dinner. I volunteered to help out with serving appetizers. It wasn't all that much work. I just had to make sure that things didn't run out. Then is was off to the tables. The galley was decorated with lights and each table had a centerpiece made from plants from the green house.

For dinner we had a potato leek soup, duck, roasted tubers, and some kind of slaw. The galley staff did an amazing job.

Our amazing galley staff: Jace, Mel, and Spencer (L to R)

After that there were an assortment of desserts in the lounge area, made by one of the materials people, John, which were also amazing.
Once dessert was finished, folks broke off into smaller group. I ended up joining a group of people to play cards for the evening.
All in all, a very good day.

By the way, thank you for the birthday wishes. I had a pretty great day. I worked in the morning and took the afternoon off, spending part of it messing around in the bouldering cave I discovered earlier this week, and part of it in the music room playing piano and trying to learn some guitar.

Bouldering cave, located in summer camp

Then dinner, where I got cards and beer from some of the other Polies. After that a group of us watched a couple of zombie movies.

Cryo Tour

Cryo is where is spend most of my time here, so I thought I’d give a bit of tour of the place. The Cryo facility is about a 2-5 minute walk from the elevated station, depending on weather, and is the closest building, after the heavy machine shop/ vehicle maintenance facility.

Cryo is the grey part of the building. The wood attachment is the Balloon Infaltion Facility, or BIF, which is used by Meteorology and NOAA. You can see the big silver doors to the right, where the balloons are brought outside after being filled with helium from my part of the building.

The first thing to do when walking into cryo is to tag in. This is a safety thing, so that if there is an accident that requires one of the emergency response teams, they know how many people are inside. 

There are similar boards at many of the facilities on station. After getting tagged in, stop by the cryo office, right next to the board. 

Then on to the important parts of the cryo facility, the three bays that contain almost all of the cryo equipment.

The liquid nitrogen plant (white), storage tank (steel),  transfer dewar (grey)

Liquid nitrogen (LN) is used for a couple of different things on station. The main use is in the liquid nitrogen cold trap I use to condense gaseous helium into the liquid heium dewars. It is also used by Aurora, a small camera which observers aurora (which I’m sure comes as a big surprise. They use it to keep the viewing window clear of frost. Occasionally medical will also request a small amount of liquid nitrogen. There is also the possibility of using some LN for burgers and ice cream.

The room with the LN plant also contains an assortment of LN and He dewars, as well as a lot of spare parts and tools.

The next bay over is almost completely occupied by the three liquid helium dewars, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. It also contains the compressors that run the cold-heads, which maintain temperatures of ~4K inside the dewars.

Simon, Theo and Alvin

Simon, Theo and Alvin's compressors (grey), sitting on top of a couple of chillers,
which are an emergency back-up. 

The last bay in the cryo facility contains the gaseous helium half-rack tanks.

12 tanks of gaseous helium. The top of the rack is useful for storing things like a
sail, a TV/VCR, and lots of extra LN transfer dewars

Most years the back-bay also contains two huge liquid helium transfer dewars, from which helium would be transferred into Alvin, Simon, and Theo throughout the winter. This year we don’t have them, so I set up an unused fuel bladder to capture the helium which is vented during dewar fills for BICEP2. So far it has worked quite well, and I’ve filled one of the half-rack tanks with recaptured helium.    

Hanging out on the bouncy castle after a fill.

Ski Gear

I’ve gotten a couple of questions about the ski equipment down here, so I thought I’d post a couple of pictures. When I got down here it took me a while to find the ski barn, but when I found it, there was a lot of gear to choose from.

Inside the ski barn.

The skis and boots are split between older back-country gear and newer entry-level gear from Fischer. Among the newer stuff are a few pairs of skate skis, but the vast majority of the skis are classic, with fish scales. Probably for the best. The first time I tried skating down here, I just about fell on my face because the snow is so sharp and grabby. So, I ended up just striding on the skate skis.

From L to R: Karhu Pavos, Fischer BC Country Crowns,
Fischer Challengers, Swix AluTeam poles

I ended up picking out one of each kind of ski to try out. I haven’t tried the Karhu Pavos yet, but I actually like classic skiing on the Fischer skates better that the Fischer classics, mainly because they are a little fast, and since they don’t have fish scales, they are a little quieter, plus, if I find a particularly fast patch of snow, I can throw in a little bit of skating.

On my last ski, I finally got my camera to stay warm enough to take a couple of pictures. It helped that it was only about –30F, rather than –50F.

At the geographic South Pole

The ceremonial South Pole

The South Pole, with the telescopes in the background