Sunday, June 24, 2012

Happy Midwinter!


This week we celebrated midwinter. It officially happened sometime on June 21st, but we had our party over the weekend. At this point we are about three months from sunrise (although we will have about a month of twilight before that), four months from station open and the first flight in (scheduled for Oct 27th, that may or may not happen depending on weather), and about four and a half months from the official end of the winter contract. Midwinter is one of the three big holidays down here over the winter, a bit like Christmas. And like at Christmas time, we’ve been getting greetings from the other Antarctic stations, and sent our own out to them.
Sorry about the blurriness. There are about 30 greetings from other
stations, along with four or five letters from various government agencies.
Here at the Pole, our celebrations kicked off on Friday night with a screening of “The Shining” in our drive-in theater, a.k.a. the gym.  I had a delivery though, so no movies for me. I also missed most of the festivities on Saturday, since I am still on nights, and will be for at least another month. I did wake up for Midwinter dinner. Beforehand, we had appetizers and drinks in the lounge.
Travis wore his Antarctic Service Medal from a few seasons ago.
Then we made our way to the dinning area, which had been set up and decorated by a number of volunteers, with a number of people donating  illegal candles to the cause.
My table, from L to R: Heather, Sven, Katie, Nate.
Not pictured: Jared, Jeremy, Tracy
Shawn made a bunch of these copper sleds as table center pieces.
They were pretty cool!
2011-2012 patches from the IT folks
For dinner we had:
Crab bisque in a bread bowl
Green beans, garlic mashed potatoes, brie-and-apple stuffed halibut, lobster tail.
It was my first time trying lobster, and I can't say I was super impressed, but the halibut and potatoes were very good.

Chocolate lava cake, with vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce. Yum!
After dinner there was a dance party that I caught part of before heading out to work. There were still a few people still dancing when I came back in at around 2AM.

All in all, a good weekend! 
 

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Aurora

Auroras on the horizon, with the Milky Way above. (Photo: Kris Amundson)
We’ve had some very active skies the past week or so. The other day after fueling the science machine I walked out of the VMF and look up out of the bowl. The entire horizon was outlined in dancing green lights.
Something like this. (Photo: Kris Amundson) 
Auroras are caused by the collision of high-energy particles with atoms in the high atmosphere (thermosphere). The high-energy particles come from the solar wind and magnetosphere surrounding the Earth. The color of the aurora depends on what kind of atom is involved in the collision, and how much energy is involved, as well as where in the atmosphere the collision occurs. Green auroras, the most common color, like those above, are caused by collisions with oxygen. Collisions with oxygen can also cause pink and red aurora, if they occur higher in the atmosphere. You can see a little bit of pink in the picture above. Collisions with nitrogen can also cause red, yellow, or blue aurora.
Photo: Robert Schwarz
On station, we are getting ready for our Mid-Winter celebration next weekend. We’ve already gotten Mid-Winter greeting from 5 other stations, and will send out our greeting to them by mid-week. Plans for the weekend include a screening of “The Shining”, a fancy dinner and a dance party.
Mid-Winter greetings from the South Pole. I'm kneeling in the middle, with the Carhartt's on. (Photo: Jay Studer)
A couple of the maintenance guys put together a set of hockey sticks a couple of weeks ago, so that has become one of the Friday night activities on station. It's has been fun, and Carlos came in took some pictures this last week of our game.
Katie and I getting ready to fight for the ball
This weekend was also Grandma’s Marathon back in Minnesota, which I’ve done for the last three years, and had registered to do this year. So instead of running along the shore of Lake Superior, I did it on the treadmill, while watching “True Grit” and “Aliens”.
I squeaked in just under my goal at 4:29:02, which I feel pretty good about at this elevation, even if it was on a treadmill, and not on the road. Then I ate breakfast and went to bed.


Blog note: I added a couple of links on the left-hand side of the page. One goes to my Antarctica photo album, one to a sub-album with the photos from the current blog entry, and a link to one of the aurora cameras on top of the station.  There is also a link to a blog by Robert Schwarz, a grantee who is down here for his eighth season.  The other two links go to the Lockheed-Martin Antarctic Support site, and to the South Pole intranet (which is only accessible by the outside world when we have satellite coverage, but has some good info).

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Station Tour

The elevated station. The far U is A pod, and the near U is B pod. The pole is located off to the 
left and about even with the middle of A pod. This photo is from 2008. The dome has since
been torn down.
I thought I'd give a bit of a station tour this week, seeing as I haven't actually done that yet. Construction on the elevated station began in 1999, and it was dedicated in 2008, so it is a fairly new building. Previous to the elevated station, Polies lived and worked in the dome, which you can see in at the top of the above picture. One of the reasons for the different design on the new station, is that buildings on the ground tend to develop big drifts, especially in the winter, when the winds pick up. In the picture, the dome is slowly being buried. With the station on stilts, snow blows under it. There is still a massive drift (~12ft high) that builds up on the pole side of the station, but it isn't against the station.
The station itself is split into A and B pod. Each pod is composed of four modules in a U shape. The arms of the U are the berthing area, with accommodations for about 30 people in each module.
A1, second floor, where I live
In the middle of this hall, to the right.
In the winter only A1 and B1 are used to house people, and some folks get double rooms, depending on how many seasons on the ice they have.
The bottoms of the each of the Us form one long hallway, with various rooms towards the pole side of the building.
One long hallway
So, starting from the far end of A pod (near the top of the station photo), and working our way forward, we have:
The galley, where the food comes from
The galley takes up all of A2. Then Medical takes up A3. Below them, on the first floor are:

The post office (closed for the season) and the station store.
 The station store sells snacks, some beer, wine, and liquor, toiletries, souvenirs, and lends movies.
The quiet reading room.
Arts and crafts
Then onto B pod.

The science lab takes up all of B2. 
It houses office space for all three RAs (Sue, Ethan, and me), the scientists from SPT, BICEP2, and IceCube, and the Meteorology folks. It also has roof access for a couple of cameras mounted on top of the station. The cameras here are the main reason that all the windows on station have to be blocked for the winter. They are very sensitive to stray light. Below the science lab is the green house and the emergency power plant.
Across the hall is the B1 lounge, which has the pool table, more books, a bar, and a TV room.
B3 is mainly offices and conference rooms on the second floor. The first floor has the laundry room, the IT office and a display for various pole artifacts.
A conference room
Coms. Pretty dead right now, but it gets a lot of use during the summer,
when planes are coming in and out.
Pole markers from the past. We are currently getting
ready to make the 2012 pole marker.
Finally we get to B4, which is taken up mainly by the gym. The music room is also here.

The cardio and lifting area

The gym
In pole news this week, we had an emergency drill on Wednesday. An accident in the power plant, with four casualties. The trauma team got to practice triage and burn treatment.
Getting our red patient packaged to move to medical
We had one green patient (walking wounded), one yellow patient (needs attention in the next couple of hours) with an electrical burn, a red patient (above, needs immediate medical attention) who was unconscious and had smoke inhalation, and a black patient (dead/dying).

Bigger versions of this week's photos can be found here.