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.