Nov 16th – Day 6 at Pole

This weekend was pretty busy – packed full of trainings. We did the first practice install of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) optics, and it was quite cold (still hanging around -50F, which has set a few daily records) but has been super calm and clear.

The big news is that one of last year’s SPT winterovers has left to go back north today, the other one planning to leave on the 25th. The new winterovers have been put on the paging system and are now basically running the show; I’m just here to supervise 🙂 We have a few more training type things to do, but for the most part the training will just be operating the telescope for the next few months and getting comfortable solving problems that arise (and preventing problems from happening).

The weather has been really super clear and calm and cold. It’s kind of strange because usually it’s much warmer by now (-20 to -30 F ish) and there are usually some pretty windy/gray days. Just waiting on those warm summer days to start running outside more seriously.

I also suppose I will be in charge of organizing the annual SPT Ladies Night event, since there will be no other SPTers here around the time I’m thinking of having it (mid-December; depending on the COVID leveling status of the station)… so stay tuned for that !