Allen Foster

Jan 26th: Day 27 on Ice.

The temperatures have been slowly dropping. It’s now around -20F , but luckily the winds have been pretty still. Usual wind chills are around -40F. It’s been a busy week. Our winter-over alternate, Maclean, arrived along with the EHT folks. This brings the number of SPT’ers up to 10! We’ve done lots of trainings, includingContinue reading “Jan 26th: Day 27 on Ice.”

Jan 20th – 21 days on Ice

A large, but thin cloud front rolled in. You could see it coming for a few hours over the horizon, like a slow grey tsunami wave. I don’t know the temps because my stupid browser wont accept the out-of-date certificate of the met’s webpage.. but it’s probably in the – teens. As a reminder, youContinue reading “Jan 20th – 21 days on Ice”

Jan 18th – Day 19 on Ice

Weather today was similar to it has been; temps somewhere in the negative teens with a wind-chill near -40F, mostly sunny. Today we updated the firmware of our readout electronics and are currently keeping a close eye on the telescope as we start our first observations. Dinner tonight was filet Mignon with asparagus risotto! mmm!Continue reading “Jan 18th – Day 19 on Ice”

Jan 17th – Day 18 on Ice

2 weeks at Pole… 38(ish) to go. Weather: Has been warm and moderately windy. Clouds gave way yesterday to one of the most beautiful, cloudless days I have ever seen at Pole, but today was windy enough for snow to be blown around giving the sky a cloudy/misty look. Temperatures around -14F with a windchillContinue reading “Jan 17th – Day 18 on Ice”

Jan 14th – Day 15 on Ice

Weather: Sunny, warm, windy. Temps around -14F, windchill -35F. Today was a beautiful day. Clear blue skies and lots of sun! We spent most of today learning about the SPT computing systems and teaching the other winterover about the readout electronics and hardware. I think we scared him a little after we looked at theContinue reading “Jan 14th – Day 15 on Ice”

Jan 12th – Day 13 on Ice

Weather: Warm, windy. Got up to the single digits today (negative, of course), but wind chill was down near -30 or -40 F. Last night was trivia night. The SPT/IceCube team took 2nd place, just edging out the Bicep crew. First place went to a team of SPoT drivers (SPoT is the South Pole Traverse).Continue reading “Jan 12th – Day 13 on Ice”

Jan 11th – Day 12 on Ice

Weather: Pure crap. Windy and grey, blowing snow and low cloud shelf. Not good for observing. Temps still relatively warm, -12F with windchill down near -40F. It was actually sunny earlier in the day, but has since gotten bad. No flights to Pole today, but hopefully the other 3 SPTers in our crew will beContinue reading “Jan 11th – Day 12 on Ice”

Jan 10 – Day 11 on Ice

Weather: Colder today, mostly because of higher winds; Temp about -18F, with wind chill of -40F. Weather was mostly sunny. Yesterday, a flight full of pax headed north from South Pole boomeranged back to Pole due to weather in McMurdo. This is quite unusual since there isn’t an LC-130 maintenance staff/ facility here at Pole,Continue reading “Jan 10 – Day 11 on Ice”

Jan 8th – Day 9 on Ice

Weather: Warm, the day started overcast, but became a beautiful sunny afternoon. Temps around -12F with a slight breeze. Today I got my first little taste of operation complication. We have a lot of electronic pagers set up to automatically check that things are operating as expected. If some measured value goes out of aContinue reading “Jan 8th – Day 9 on Ice”

Jan 7th – Day 8 on Ice

Weather: Beautiful sunny day! Very little wind; slightly bizarre how still it was today. Some high, wispy clouds at times. Temperatures: Warm, around -10F . Today I learned what to check during daily rounds. Each day one of the winter overs will have to go out to the Dark Sector Lab (DSL), where SPT isContinue reading “Jan 7th – Day 8 on Ice”