Weather: Cold, calm and clear. Temperature near -100F, winds less than 5 knts!
The station. Pinks and oranges are now prevalent on clear days. The eyes adjust much quicker, and this photo is actually darker than what the eye sees, but pulls out the sunrise colors nicely.
Today, I decided I couldn’t waste the low winds and went for a run out to the polarization calibration source (something like 3km from the station… they moved it closer last year, but it used to be 5km from station). It was -97F while I was out on my run, but the low winds made it bearable… at least for the 30 or so minutes I was running.
Galley scroll right after my run, showing the temperature, wind and physiological altitude.Me, returning from my run. So long as it isn’t windy, you can stay pretty warm while running… The problem with wind is the face !
Now that the sun is high enough to provide ample light I can start taking pictures outside again… the only problem now is that it’s so cold that having your hands outside of gloves, even for 30s is painful.
Dark Sector panorama from the observation deck. You can really see the shadow of the Earth in this pano, and the beautiful Sun getting closer to rising on the horizon.
Weather: Warmer, around -65F with light winds and some clouds.
Today the winds were light enough for me to brave the cold for an outdoor run. Went about 3 miles before I was worried about frostbite on parts of my face and neck that were slightly exposed. Beautiful to see the sun start showing itself again, and really convenient for walking/running outside now that I can see things!
Panorama from the front of DSL. Though it still looks dark out, the eyes are amazingly able to adjust to make it appear quite bright outside!Horizon shines with light behind the BICEP Array telescope. You can just barely see the Earth’s shadow beginning on the top right of the image.
This weekend was a 2 day weekend due to the Labor Day holiday. One of the big events was watching the Big Lebowski, and many people showed up in robes to drink white russians and watch the movie.
Some work related things: We began observing some planets (Saturn and Jupiter) in order to measure our telescope’s beam shape. This is important when calculating things like power spectra of the CMB because it tells you how light propagates from the sky to our detectors through our optical system. Although planet images with a 1 arcminute resolution camera (i.e. SPT) are not all that interesting (because the planets are smaller than one beam size), here is an over-exposed map of Saturn that we took a few days ago.
There are some dark stripes across the image because the filtering mask I used when map making was too small for the source. The structure you see there is not due to Saturn itself, but is due to optical effects of the telescope, lenses and detectors.
Weather: Cold, windy, blowing snow and low vis. We got down to -70C a few days ago, and it has averaging around -63C for the past few days (that’s like -85 to -90F). Winds have been pretty high, so the windchill has been brutal.
We took our window covers on the station down today… you can see that in the live-feed cam (if the weather isn’t too bad). We could do this because the sensitive aurora cam on the roof has been turned off… unfortunately it’s still so dark out (and the windows are so tinted) that the windows effectively act as mirrors:
One of the galley windows. Nice and cover free…
Last weekend was my birthday, and we didn’t do anything special particularly for me, but the station did host an Iron Chef event. It was really fun to watch the 4 teams participate and cook. I was actually pretty surprised at the quality of food which they each made (I didn’t participate… no one would have wanted that!). The 5 ingredients to include were: corn, miso, cocoa powder, bacon and beets. I don’t actually know how Iron Chef works, but it was my understanding that they had to incorporate all of the ingredients into their dishes.
We now have 3 weeks until sunrise. Hard to believe summer is almost here! My work ethic has plummeted, but hopefully with the increasing sunlight, some life will be brought back into the station. I think it’s a pretty common thing, the lack of interest, depression, lethargy, caused by being down here. Being in the darkness and cold, cooped up in a building with these other people. We seemed to have moved from working and sports in the evenings, to watching tv shows and movies. Vegging out seems much more attractive than working on projects.
I find myself staring at my computer screen, trying to understand the code I’ve written and trying to figure out why something isn’t working. For example, today I spent about 3 hours trying to understand why my script wasn’t reading in data properly… it turns out I was telling it to look in the wrong directory. Things like that eat at me daily. Stupid mistakes, easy math that isn’t so easy anymore, tiredness all the time. Do I just slug down more coffee and get more irritable? or just remain tired and get more irritable? It’s a harsh continent 🙂
Sun light on the horizon. SPT, DSL and MAPO silhouetted. Only 3 weeks till sunrise!
Although the Sun won’t rise for another 3 weeks, we can see signs of real-deal sunlight. Even some yellows and oranges in there too!
Even with the impending sunrise, temperatures are still cold. According to our meteorologist, we may have some of the coldest days of the year so far next week! It’s currently -60C (around -80F) with calm winds and thin, high altitude ice clouds.
Returning from rounds at DSL. Two balaclavas, a hat and big red… sometimes the wind just gets in no matter what!
Weather: It was very cold and clear the past few days. Temperatures down near or below -90F and winds generally around 10knts, which makes for a cool -140F windchill.
A little timelapse of the Milky Way over the station… if you pay attention you’ll see why astronomers hate satellites! Even here at the South Pole, you can see lots and lots of satellites at any given time!
Team SPT winterover 2020! This photo was taken with a 20s exposure and Geoff flashed a white light quickly during it to brighten us up a bit. (I’m on the left.) Photo credit Geoff ChenA panorama showing Milky Way and auroras over SPT and the station. You can see the Sun’s light on the horizon starting to show! Photo cred: Geoff Chen
Aaaaand here’s a photo from my own phone, looking at the horizon near the Sun from the dock of SPT.
Weather: Clouds briefly rolled in and warmed things up to around -46C. We’re now cooling back down to around -60C. Winds are light, around 5-10knts.
I’ve gotten about 12 hours of sleep in the past 4 days because I’ve been getting up at 0230 each morning for a conference which starts at 0300, and for phone calls and other meetings (and, of course, just to use DSCS which is up from 1-6am now).
Tonight I’m flipping my schedule, attempting to stay up late (until maybe 0300 or so) and then sleeping until about 9 or 10am. I have meetings a 0730 some days of the week, so we’ll see how this goes. It also means I’ll have to skip breakfast, which is kind of a bummer.
Anyway, things have been going smooth here and we’re seeing more and more light on the horizon! Summer is coming!
I don’t know if I’ve uploaded this photo yet, so here it is: a photo of me greasing the telescope under auroras and the Milky Way. Wind chill was around -140F that day… photo cred Geoff Chen
Weather: It has been cold and clear recently. Temperatures regularly below -90F. We hit our low temperature of -101.2F last week according to our meteorologist.
We are now entering Astronomical twilight, which means that there is a slight hint of sunlight appearing on the horizon! There is hope yet, that the Sun will return!
This is the handy-dandy twilight calendar for the South Pole. We’re in the midst of astronomical twilight… soon enough the sun will be providing enough light for us to see outside, even though it will still be well below the horizon.
We finished filming our film-fest films (one for the 48hr submission and one for the ‘open’ category). The 48hr film is a noir-style murder mystery and the open submission is an homage to an older submission, shot in the style of a news cast here at South Pole.
We will be watching submissions from other stations and voting on the winning video(s) this weekend.
Filming one of the scenes from the news film.Filming our medical scene — I was on the surgical lights.
My sleep schedule has been pretty weak the past few weeks. I’ve been getting up at 4am to use the good satellite, DSCS, which is up from about 1-6am these days. Soon I might switch my schedule to stay up late, and sleep in. But this is kind of tough because meetings with people up North generally happen early in the am here. For example I have a meeting this week to talk with some SPT grad students about work we’re all doing, and the meeting is at 0330 for me… I’m a slave to the satellite!
The nice thing about getting up early is that I can get some work done and then go to the gym before lunch, instead of after it… actually I still go after, so I guess I can go twice. But by the afternoon I’m usually pretty tired and my work ethic drops rapidly. Then on Mondays and Fridays we usually play volleyball from like 7pm to 10pm … so those days are pretty long.
Weather: We finally broke through the arbitrary barrier of -100F yesterday! Clear skies and lowish winds accompany the cold.
We have started working in earnest on this year’s submissions to the “Winter International Film Festival of Antarctica”, where stations from all around the continent (and thus of all different nations) submit films for competition. The main competition, however is the 48 hour film, in which all filming for a short 5 minute film must be completed within 48 hours of the announcement of the 5 essential elements. These 5 elements, which are chosen from different stations’ submissions each year are unknown before the start of the competition so we must come up with a film (and film style!) in which we can fit all of these elements.
There is also an ‘open’ category which does not have the 48hr restriction, nor the time restriction. So we’ve been busy filming and editing during the past few days and will be super swamped for the next 2.
Weather: Clear earlier in the week with nice auroras. Now cloudy and warm(ish), around -50C.
We celebrated “Fesitvus in July” this weekend, with the airing of grievances, a white elephant, and lots of festive holiday movies.
I didn’t take any pictures of that, but I do have this beautiful photo of the other SPT winterover, Geoff, in front of SPT, auroras and the Milky Way. Photo cred: Geoff Chen.
SPT and SPT winterover Geoff Chen on a clear night The center of the Milky Way is very prominent along with some nice subtle auroras. Photo Cred: Geoff Chen.
Other than that, I don’t have much else interesting to share today, though I will say that I figured out that I can run on the treadmill while reading a paper on the large TV in the gym. It only kind of destroys my eyes 😛 … I just have to run with the computer mouse in my hand to scroll through the paper! But now I can be productive AND active! Win!
Well I’m embarrassed that it’s been so long since I posted on here. The combination of being busy combined with the internet coming up early has really made it tough for me to upload things on here… that or I’m just getting lazy. Either way, here’s a quick recap of the past few weeks!
Weather: We’ve had some really cold days, getting down to nearly -100F at one point (not quite there, yet, but close!). Mostly the temps sit between -65F and -85F with windchills that can reach down to -140F!
Two weeks ago, I had a really busy time because we were holding the South Pole Olympics (or the Polympics, if you will). The schedule for the event is posted below, but essentially took most of two weekends and every evening for the week between! Also during this week, the South Pole Telescope collaboration meeting took place – which was between 3am and 9am for 4 days that week. I had shifted my sleep schedule to accommodate the polympics and the meeting, and was sleeping from 12a-3am, then again from 10a-3pm ish. It was pretty brutal.
The South Polympics schedule. I participated in every event except for the unicycle events! Also from Wednesday to Saturday was the SPT collaboration meeting from roughly 3am-9am during the DSCS satellite pass.
There were a lot of fun events, including the ECW decathlon, which was all outside and required ECW (the Extreme Cold Weather gear). Temperatures were below -85F for the entire Decathlon, so it was pretty chilly. I’m in the process of collecting pictures and videos from the events to post here, but I don’t have them all together and/or edited yet. Below are some examples from some of the events:
The high jump event was a particular success! Lots of fun was had by all, and I ended up winning Gold with my 36″ jump! We fluffed up some snow on the backside of the jump so that we could fall onto our backs without killing ourselves.The final decathlon event – Ski out to DSL and back! I did not do well in this, taking 3rd out of 4 participants. Here you can see myself behind the 2nd place person, and if you squint you can see the headlamp of the 4th place participant back near the DSL buildings.Starting line for the 400m “dash”…. no one is dashing in ECW! I’m in the middle here, and came in 2nd in the event (out of 3).
But not all events were outside! There were many indoor events as well, including a lot of the team sports.
3v3 dodge-ball was one of the indoor events… I of course blew out my arm immediately, but pushed on to help my team win Gold!
Power lifting was another indoor event… in which I surprised myself because I never do heavy deadlifts. I got 2nd in percent-body-weight lifted.One of the final, and most fun events was the South Pole “Curling”… which was played out more like shuffleboard, but Zane had made nice ice ‘stones’ to use by freezing brushes into the bottom of buckets.
All in all, the Polympics were very tiring but also very fun. It was a nice change up from the usual routine.
I have some awesome videos from some of the events – like the ECW hill climb (which was a tragic comedy), and badminton – which I need to edit before uploading.
And with that, I will hopefully return to a more regular posting schedule. I don’t take many pictures myself these days, so it’s a bit more difficult to get photos to make these posts more exciting.
Like just earlier this week, I was out greasing the telescope with a windchill of nearly -140F! Brr! that was cold, but there’s no good way to explain how cold it was on a blog
Allen's South Pole Winter-Over 2020 (+) 