A day in the dark

Due to some work being done on a glycol loop down in the power plant, we had to practice some pretty extreme energy conservation measures. This pretty much meant that I spent the bulk of the day in the lab in the dark. It was actually pretty nice, and even led to me playing my harmonica for a couple folks and singing "campfire songs" for a little bit. They finished up the work in the power plant around dinner time, so it's good to have that option of turning on the lights again if the mood moves you.

The wind was really blowing today, and there is a lot of snow moving around out there right now. It will be interesting to see how the drift upwind of the station grows over the months. They bladed it down some, but it was a good 12-15 feet tall when I got here this summer. We've still got plenty of light to see by outside, though looking out through the highly tinted windows makes it seem a lot more murky than it really is.

Jupiter!

Well, a second bright shiny appeared in our sky today. Jupiter finally became visible, and it was neat to see a little point of light like that again. I remember standing in Christchurch the first night back, in a narrow alleyway by the arts center behind Dux Delux, and looking up and seeing my first star in about 5 months peek through some broken clouds in the little strip of sky sandwiched between the buildings. We'll see plenty of stars in the coming months, and it will be awesome to get reacquainted with the southern constellations once again, like I got to on the tall ship sailing to Easter Island last year.

Speaking of other interesting things in the sky, if it were a bit darker we'd likely have had some seriously intense auroras the last couple days. With some newly developed sun spots there has been a lot of activity picked up on a number of my projects. The VLF has been sounding different, and that's probably for the first time I'm getting to hear a much more clear version of the auroral hiss phenomenon. I guess I'll be expected to let folks (inside) know when there are auroras in the sky to go photograph. We won't be able to see out the windows, since we put blinds up to keep our stray light from the living spaces from interfering with a lot of the sky cameras and photometers the will be studying what is going on in the heavens during the long Antarctic night.

Poliedaemmerung!

Twilight of the Polies...isn't that the truth. I think we've moved into another phase of twilight today, as it seemed much darker outside. My UV monitoring project also transitioned into a new, scaled-back mode of data gathering since the sun is now just over 3 degrees below the level of the horizon. It will only do one scan per day for how much ultraviolet radiation is bouncing around outside until the sun gets back higher in the sky than it is currently. That will probably be sometime in late September. It's not pitch black, by any means outside, and we probably won't hit what I believe is referred to as "astronomical twilight" for another week or so. It probably doesn't look all that dark to you, but that I could go outside without wearing goggles or sunglasses is a major difference from how it is here during the blindingly bright summer.


Our rock band had its first major practice session for about 3 hours last night. It was definitely a whole lot of fun, and marked my first real act of singing in public since 8th grade back at good ol' Florence Middle School. Of course, back then I wasn't trying to sing like Freddie Mercury, so this is a little bit more exciting/challenging. I'm definitely going to wear ear plugs next time, as that was a lot of acoustic energy reflecting around not all that big a room.

Yesterday we also had a radio drill for the entire station's emergency response apparatus. My fire brigade, having done one under my tutelage earlier in the winter, did a really bang-up job. It was also nice to have it be a drill inside the station, so we didn't have to worry about freezing ourselves and our fairly temperature-sensitive gear outside.

I'm skipping a wine tasting event tonight in the galley. Stuff like that down here on the Ice just seems a little too soft and out of place for my taste. I guess I just don't feel the necessity to be pampered and pretend like I'm all high-class and cultured or something. Supper was leftover brats and taters and a World War II novel for me, and now some more guitar practice before I present this evening's installment of "From the Earth to the Moon". That is, if anybody opts to abandon their pinot noir and finger food. Undoubtedly, my experience as a DA last year biased me against this sort of social event. After all, somebody has to clean the dishes.

shrinking horizons

Today we had a nice little blast out of eastern Antarctica. The altitude there is significantly higher, like at AGAP camp where I got to work those couple days back in January, so it's necessarily colder. The cold air rushes downhill in what is called a katabatic wind, and that's when our temperatures plummet. Unfortunately, that direction generally is the one in which I have to face when walking to ARO, so though most of my body was warm on the walk out there today I still had a frigid blast coming right through the vents in my goggles. Even so, it's amazing that a -105F wind chill didn't feel colder. All that wind and the decreasing light made for some fairly low visibility earlier on in the day, which always makes it feel just a little more like what I envisioned Antarctica to be like before I got down here last year.

I was out at ARO for almost 6 hours yesterday doing a triple calibration of one of my instruments. It is an ultraviolet monitoring project, and since we've very little time with sunlight left it is in the gradual process of scaling back to a very minimal operational status for the duration of the winter. I wish I could say the same for myself... Anyhow, with the wind and cold up there yesterday it was a really short time before fingers started to get really a bit too cold for comfort. Between doing that sort of stuff every day and playing loads of guitar, my hands are having a bit rough time of it.

Did I say guitar playing? Does this mean that the band is back on for the winter? That's a big affirmative on both accounts. Mid-winter will probably be our first gig. We have 10 songs tentatively picked out for our set list, and it should be a lot of fun to be "in the band" for the first time. I'm planning on doing some lead singing as well as playing guitar, so you know it's going to be a cold place somewhere when that actually comes to pass.

Speaking of music, my brother's band Vegetable is trying to get into a battle of the bands called the Deadwood Derby back in Lawrence, Kansas. They have to get voted in by the public into one of the 6 possible slots for performers. If you'd like to hear some of their songs, just click the link to their Myspace page. You can vote online once per day until March 28th at lawrence.com if you want to show them some love and help get them into the contest. Your support would be awesome!

Much obliged...

one of these days...to the Moon

Well, Friday night the sunset dinner was quite tasty. I just had the beef tenderloin, and skipped the lobster tail, since it really doesn't appeal to me. There was a little party afterward, and the dancefloor was vastly different than this summer. I tried to find my groove, but just wasn't into it so much. Perhaps having done the 300 workout only a little while earlier had something to do with that.

Unfortunately, the sky was very overcast, so most of us probably saw the sun for the last time late Thursday night. All that is left of the fiery orb is a brighter spot on the horizon. But, today the moon really was visible and beautiful.

farewell fair light

Well, the days go on and the sun sinks lower. It's all so gradual, but it will be so very decisively night for months on end. I guess it is exciting, but it feel more like the resolution to follow through with something weighty and important (perhaps marriage?) than a rock'em sock'em adventure.



This weekend is one of the station's 2-day weekends, and we will be having a fancy dinner and party in honor of the sunset. I don't know what all else is planned during the days, but hopefully I'll be able to participate around work. I guess the next "holiday" will likely be mid-winter in June, but I'm sure we'll find some reasons in the meantime to celebrate. The next few weeks will be pretty tough for us science techs. By about April 12 we will have to have gotten the winter-only projects (mostly cameras and other optical instruments that study what's going on in the sky) up and running. My walk to ARO and working out on the roof are going to be so very different in the dark. It's going to take some getting used to, I'm sure.

Oh boy, we just watched Platoon. I had a similar alien sensation as when I saw Rescue Dawn last year in McMurdo. To watch people moving through the jungle landscape of southeast Asia while here, particularly Pole where we don't even have soil, is so very bizarre. That there are animals and plants in such profusion as to be dangerous to health and life is about as far from the environs of the Antarctic Plateau as you can get.

Blowin' in the wind

We had some visitors arrive in the last few days. All these little puffballs of frost rolled in and got stuck everywhere. I first noticed them in the lee of some sastrugi, and it almost looked like a weird bird's nest. I guess the right kind of frost forms, just enough wind starts bits blowing, and they accumulate more as they roll along. It was a really neat little surprise to discover.

That sun just keeps creeping toward the horizon. It is remarkable how different this place starts to look when it gets a little dark. We'll still have light once the sun goes down on Saturday, but it will be an increasingly dim twilight into April.