Bright

Looking out from Cryo. Kind of looks like an alien landscape.

Sorry about not posting in a while. Things have been getting busy lately. As you can see, the sun is up, which is exciting and uplifting. And with the sun has also come weather. We've had two storms since sunrise, neither of which were bad, but made for poor visibility and lots of wind. And anytime it hasn't been storming, it has been unseasonably cold (e.g. in the -80s and -90s). Someday we'll get warm temperatures and sun at the same time. It'll be amazing.

At the beginning of this week, we had September emergency drill. Since the weather was warm enough to run vehicles, the drill was out at cryo, which was a little bit stressful for me. Lots of running around, making sure none of my equipment got damaged as the fire and medical teams wandered around trying to take care of our two casualties.

Jay, getting ready for the drill. "Intestines" made from latex glove fingers
stuffed with cooked chicken, and then covered with fake blood.

The scenario was that the LN2 plant exploded, causing a cryogen leak. Jay suffered a head injury and evisceration, while our other patient, Jim, got hit in the arm with flying debris, causing a fracture.

Fire team dragging Jay to safety, through the fog-filled
cryo building.

Other than that excitement, I've been busy at cryo, trying to get things ready to hand over to Flint once he gets here on the 27th. I did the preventative maintenance on the LN2 plant, which was a lot like changing the oil on my car, except messier since whoever designed the machine put the oil inlet in the most awkward spot possible. I finally emptied out the first LHe dewar, boiling off the last 100L or so and pumping that into the gas tanks. I'll probably start boiling off the second dewar in a week or so, since the NSF would like to pull the dewars as soon as possible, in order to make room of a new experiment.

Outside of cryo, I've been keeping busy trying to plan my vacation. I got my ticket info last week, so that has made planning a little easier. Right now, I am scheduled to leave Pole on  Nov. 2nd (1 month and 1 day away!), but since weather tends to be extremely variable this time of year, I've been told not to make any solid plans until the 15th. If I get off the ice before then, great, that'll mean time to do some hiking and rafting. After the 15th, I'll be picking up a bike in Auckland and heading down the east coast of the north island, with a 32K trail race on the 17th, which I am really looking forward to. On the 23rd, I'll head home, making it to St. Paul by the 26th, with a layover in AZ to visit my grandma.

With leaving a little more than a month away, I've realized how quickly the last eight months have past. It has been an incredible experience, and I am glad that I decided to come down here.

One of many beautiful sights at the South Pole, the early morning sun
over cryo.

Sunrise

Almost full light out in the dark sector. Also, check out the snow
drift, MAPO Mountain, that built over the winter. It is about as
tall as I am.

So, we’ve had a fairly eventful couple of weeks here. The equinox is on the 23^rd, so it is almost fully light out, at least when the weather is good. I switched back to day-shift at the beginning of the week, which was a little rough in terms of sleep, but it is nice to see people and feel like part of the community again. We’ve also started getting ready for station opening. The runway has been groomed and flags have been placed marking out the crossing zone (between the station and the dark sector), and for where the South Pole Airport will get placed once it gets dragged off the berms. Let’s see, the window covers came down on the 10^th, so we’re not living aboard a submarine anymore. That has been great, particularly at dinner. At that time the sunrise has moved into view, and since the windows are tinted, the colors tend to be intensified, making for some pretty surreal oranges and pinks in the sky.

In decent weather, we get colors like this.

For Sunrise weekend, this is what we got. You can see a vague outline of the
station, about a 1/4mi from cryo, where I took the picture.

We celebrated Sunrise this last weekend, with Sunrise dinner on Saturday night. A group of us kicked off the long weekend by setting up the drive-in movie theater in the gym.

Lots of sci-fi/fantasy showing this weekend.

Sunrise dinner tends to be less formal that the other winter holidays, so this year’s theme was a 50’s-style greasy spoon, complete with the bus-boys/servers dressed like greasers. 

My dinner table, with menus/games and crayons.
L to R: Chris (not pictured), Jared, K-ris, Heather, Doc, Guy, Tracy, me (not pictured)

The projector had also been set up in the galley, so Grease played during dinner. JP also debut his short film, “A Warm Place”.

Blue Moon (a picture post)

Early dawn at the south pole

So this week was a blue moon, which means that it was the second full moon of the month. Down here, we did didn't get a great view, since it was pretty cloudy, but here is what it looked like:

Other than that, an uneventful week. The sky is brighter and all but the brightest stars are gone. We've had some days with incredible color.

Dark sector silhouettes

Another day of sunrise over the station

Twilight

A few last auroras before it gets too bright

We had our first (and hopefully only) power outage of the season this week. Outages aren't unheard of, and we've been lucky so far this winter. The generator only failed for about 30 second, so not long, but long enough that I got to run out to cryo to check on the compressors just as I was getting ready for bed. And then I got to hike out to MAPO to restart one of the experiments I'm monitoring. So, a late morning, but I did get treated to this on my way out to MAPO.

Flaglines in the early morning

Along with a beautiful skyline, the lack of wind and "warm" weather (~-60F) made for a pretty nice walk. And things are definitely getting brighter. In fact, if you look closely, you can see shadows (which are, admittedly, partially due to the moon being up right now). We are officially in nautical twilight. Another couple of weeks and we'll be in civil twilight. Then sunrise!

Other than that, we had our monthly ERT drill this week. Not particularly exciting, although we did lose our dummy patient, who was asystole when we got to the scene. But our other patient survived and is doing fine.

The pole marker with the sunrise, moon, Mars, Saturn, and Spica
in the background

The moon behind the power plant

Blog note: I also wanted to point your attention to a new link, South Pole Tumblr. It has pictures, and a few comments, that don't make it onto the blog.

Glow

A glow around the station.

It has been pretty amazing to watch the changes outside the past couple of weeks. Things have gotten brighter, at least when it's clear. Along with the rising light, we've also gotten a little bit wilder weather. Today it is cloudy and in the -60's, yesterday it was clear and in the -90's. While we probably won't make it back down into the -100's again this season, we'll probably get some pretty big swings in temperature as the sun comes back up and more energy is pumped into the atmosphere because of that.

On clear days, we've also been treated to a view of Mars, Saturn and Spica trailing the sun along the horizon.

Spica, Mars, and Saturn off to the right. Wave hello to Curiosity!

That picture is a couple of days old, and since Mars has been moving fast in comparison to the others, those three now form something close to an equilateral triangle, rather than a line. Also, while the picture doesn't show it, now instead of a hint of light, we've got a little bit of orange and pink just above the horizon to go along with the general glow. I think that the prospect of the sun rising has also brought the mood up around the station.

This weekend was our monthly two-day weekend, and to celebrate some folks organized a small fair. There was a chili cook-off, a photo booth, a bean-bag toss, a pie-eating contest and an auction. I somehow got talked into doing the pie-eating contest, so now I will never have to do one of those again. I did come close to winning, but Shawn beat me in the tie-breaker (30 seconds to eat as much pie as we could) by a half an oz. I think his beard gave him an advantage, what with being able to stick more pie to his face. I'm trying to get pictures from some of the spectators, so I will post those when I get them.

Also, I finished up my biggest milage week so far at Pole. 42 miles on the treadmill, and felt good for most of it. I was pretty pleased with myself, and then I read Nicole's blog, where she did 115 miles. So, while I'm still pretty happy with myself, that certainly put things in perspective. Also, the group I've been working out with finished up our P90X rotation and we are now moving on to Insanity, which we should be able to finish up before we redeploy.

Oh yes, we've finally gotten an ETA on our redeployment. No ticketing info yet (we probably won't get that until October), but at least we've got some info. I, and most of my friends are scheduled to get out of here on Nov. 2nd, so depending on weather, it could be the 5th or 6th before we get to New Zealand.

Auroras out by SPT and BICEP2

Maybe getting brighter?

So we are officially in twilight now. The picture above was taken be Robert Schwarz a couple of weeks ago, with a circle around a little bit of brightening on the horizon. It isn’t very obvious. The last couple of days though, it has been noticeably brighter along the horizon. Less than two months until sunrise!

There is light on the horizon!

Probably my most exciting thing down here in the last couple of weeks, is that I did my last liquid nitrogen delivery to Aurora Cam last night. I am also switching over to a swing shift schedule in the next couple of days, so that Steffen and I can do LHe deliveries to BICEP before dinner.

While we haven’t been able to watch the London Olympics (which a number of us are pretty bummed about), we have been doing something with McMurdo to celebrate. The folks at McMurdo are “running the torch” out to us, and we are running is back to them. Basically, people are keeping track of their running mileage and pooling it together, with the goal of reaching 830 miles before sunrise. After a little more than a week, the South Pole runners are at 80 miles, and I’ve added 46 of them. There have only been four people adding mileage so far, so hopefully a couple more people will start posting their miles, so we can get the torch back to McMurdo faster.

Star trails. Since the stars never go below the horizon, if you
do time-lapse photography, you get something like this.
Photo courtesy Robert Schwarz

Green

Auroras at the South Pole, from the ground (courtesy of Robert Schwarz) and above from the ISS

So, there has been lots of solar activity the last couple of weeks, which means we’ve been getting some pretty amazing light shows down here. And since the sun is slowly making it’s way towards the horizon, we are also starting to get some reds and purples along with the usual green auroras.

The other place we are getting green is of course the green house, which has been our only source of fresh food since station closing back in February. It is also a great place to just hang out. It is warm and bright and humid and has actual smells, unlike the rest of the station, which tends to be a little chilly, a little dark and very dry (relative humidity is usually in the single digits).

Our green house is run by the University of Arizona, which is the same institution that is developing greenhouses for a possible human settlement on the moon. Since the Antarctic Treaty prohibits bringing soil down here, the plants grown in a hydroponics-system, fed by nutrient rich water. The system is closely monitored, from water, minerals, CO2, and light, to temperature, pH, and humidity, and the outputs, like the weights and types of produce harvested are carefully measured.

The rate at which things grow down here is pretty incredible. In their natural habitat plants do fairly well, but they have to make due with what they have. Down here the plants can be given almost exactly what they need so they grow really well. We could probably make them grow even better if we optimized for a single crop, but since variety is the spice of life, and makes meals more interesting, we have to make compromises. So things like strawberries don’t get as much light as they’d like, which means they don’t grow as fast or as big as they could.

Basil sprouts, among others

Seeds are planted in a sponge-like substrate, which is initially placed on a tray with a thin layer of water on the bottom. As the root system develops, they are moved to troughs that line the green house.

The plants are fed through a complex computer-controlled system of hydraulic system of pumps, mixers, tubes and measurement sensors hidden under the troughs.

Our not very big strawberries

The troughs are built on rails so that different plants can be rolled in and out depending on how much light the various plants need.

We've got lots of lettuce down here

Also, a variety of chard. Very colorful, and tasty.

Our tomatoes have not done very well this winter

But the peppers look very pretty, even if I don't like them