A hint of darkness

Well, we had our partial solar eclipse here in Antarctica yesterday. Here at Pole we got about 83% of the sun obscured, and it got a slight bit less bright outside for about 30 minutes. It was by no means night, but wasn't as hellishly bright as it has been these last months. It was fun to see how everybody was going about looking at the eclipse directly and indirectly. I took all my direct photos using a DVD-R as a filter, which was pretty nifty.





The indirect photos I took using a pin hole in a cardboard box were a lot of fun.



The temperatures dropped from around -48F to -54F during the eclipse, and are now hovering around -51F. The planes have to stop flying at -58F (-50C) since their hydraulic systems tend to start freezing up around that temperature. We've got one week left until the tentative close of Pole for the winter until October, or whenever the weather permits. We've got 202 people on-station right now, and that should drop to just over 180 with today's outbound passenger flights.