April 9th – Day 100 on Ice

Weather: Last night the weather was surprisingly clear for how windy it was. Wind speeds are up around 15-20 mph. Temperatures stay relatively warm, around -70F.

The moon made a very stunning appearance yesterday. Full and low on the horizon, it looked immensely massive. Quite a few stars were also visible in the darkening sky overhead as the clouds cleared. I even saw a satellite passing by while outside during one of my sauna cycles. The darkness and full moon made for an odd sensation that I don’t think I’ve felt since I’ve been here. It reminds me of the fascination I have with the night sky and with astronomy in general… It still boggles my mind that there is a massive spherical object orbiting us millions of miles away; like a slow silent dance that I somehow don’t often notice back home.

It’s amazing how well the human eye is adapted to the light conditions we have on Earth. I could make out the structures on the surface of the moon, while still seeing the dimmer foreground structures (the snow, the station, etc.).. but the camera just does not do it justice. The low light levels make the ccd readout noise stand out, and the image becomes grainy.

I got a 2.5 hour tour of the Atmospheric Research Lab last night, which was a bit longer than I thought it would be! But it didn’t seem long- lots of details of the many atmospheric monitoring experiments here, as well as a good bit of detail about the Dobson spectrophotometers that attempt to measure ozone levels using the sunlight reflected off of the Moon!

I have also begun working on my lectures for the Astronomy and Cosmology course I will be teaching this year… I’m thinking about starting the first lecture ~2 weeks from now, and the first lecture will be about “Cosmic Perspective” and understanding the size and age of our universe, as well as local perspective – that being the South Pole – which is a unique place on Earth for astronomy.