Author Archives: Allen Foster

Well, if anyone is looking at the livefeed cams you might notice the weather is terrible. The marathon has been postponed 1 week. Models predict a weather window starting Monday afternoon and lasting about 24 hours, so I will attempt my run then (so long as the winds stay low). Good news is that itContinue reading “Jan 08th – Day 53 at Pole”

Whew, it’s been a busy few weeks. We had New Years festivities here which were fun, as well as lots of work finishing up summer maintenance tasks on the telescope. We’re now getting ready to hold the 2022 South Pole Marathon (this Sunday, Jan 9th). Myself and one of the SPT winterovers have been busyContinue reading “Jan 06th – Day 51 at Pole”

Happy Holidays! We had a busy but productive week practicing for our Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) run in April. This requires installing mirrors onto the telescope to divert light from the primary dish into the EHT receiver, which rides along next to the SPT one. We also have to use an entirely different set ofContinue reading “Dec 26th – Day 46 at Pole”

Weather has been extremely warm; we almost got to positive temperatures!! Temps now hovering around -18C (-0.4F)… The winds are rather high, though, with sustained 10 m/s winds (something like 20knts). According to our meteorologist we may even hit record warm temperatures over the next few days — nice for people, but not so niceContinue reading “Dec 19th – Day 39 at Pole”

Weather has cleared up; winds have calmed down and sky has cleared up. Hope it keeps up like this! Not much is new. We gave a couple tours of the science buildings to people who were leaving this past weekend/ tomorrow and to some of the folks who arrived on the traverse (SPOT 1). SinceContinue reading “Dec 12th – Day 32 at Pole”

Weather : much windier, but still warm. Temps between -15 and -20 F, with winds steady around 15knts gusting to 26 (30mph). Eclipse timelapse I took, showing the telescope setup we had for viewing the eclipse: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EnVzr8kAnM9ChMvOG2NEIwwIFLr0j5W2/view?usp=sharing Eclipse timelapse (composite photo) from Aman Chokshi (SPT winterover) : — also you should absolutely check out hisContinue reading “Dec 7th – Day 27 at Pole”

Lots of stuff going on. Where to begin. Weather has been super nice; clear and relatively cold for this time of year (around -30F). I got my COVID booster shot a few days ago – that sucked. Felt just as bad as my 2nd Pfizer shot, but hey now I’m boosted. We had our firstContinue reading “Dec 5th – Day 25 at Pole”

Wow, it’s been 11 days since I last posted. Whoops. Weather has warmed up a lot! We had a few record daily high temps (around -8F) but are now back down to -25F. Weather has been really calm the past few days too, so I could get some semi-comfortable runs in outside. Biggest news isContinue reading “Nov 29th – Day 19 at Pole”

Hard to believe it’s been a week already! Weather has been fantastic – the best I’ve ever experienced here; a week of really calm and clear conditions. Winds have picked up today (though they’re still about average or even below average) and it’s supposed to get a little “stormy” this weekend as increased winds bringContinue reading “Nov 18th – Day 8 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’sContinue reading “Nov 16th – Day 6 at Pole”