Wrinkles in need of ironing

Temperatures have moderated some here at Pole, and we’ve been in the -70s°F range for some time. Though the sun is long gone, there still lingers quite a lot of light on the horizon. Hopefully new folks will remember how long it takes between this deep a twilight and having the local star in the sky, so when we get to the end of the season there won’t be too much premature anticipation of redeployment.

We’re still working through the growing pains of the seamless turnover from old to new employers. I am currently trying to resolve time card issues, paycheck issues, benefits enrollment issues; not to mention running a bunch of science instruments and leading the local fire brigade. I just had a computer go down for my aurora cameras, which will need considerable attention. We do this all with pretty limited internet connectivity to the outside world. In fact, I think we probably have less bandwidth to this station than the International Space Station has back to Earth.

Running those aurora cameras is always a challenge, since they are here in the main station building. This means we have to get everybody on board regarding using only the right types of lights in the allowable fashion while outside. We have to enforce good light seals on window coverings. We have to keep unauthorized people off the station’s roof. We have to fight with the fact that though there is only ~1-2% relative humidity in this building that it will still get into the optical domes over the cameras and frost them up if proper precautions are not taken. That is all on top of the usual hardware and software challenges with which science projects here are faced. So, though the images and science are cool, it can be a real test of one’s patience when other folks don’t play ball.

Another topic, since I’m writing a lot about challenges currently being faced here, is that though we have been sealed from the germ-ridden outside world for a couple months now, there have been several cases of people getting sick in recent weeks. Proper sanitation in the bathroom and in the galley around the food is really the only culprit. It is pretty disheartening when we could alleviate this source of contagion by normal, sane sanitary practices, but some folks can’t be bothered. Hopefully this can get nipped in the bud ASAP, before too many other folks (especially yours truly) succumb. Given that it is not even fully past twilight in the season, it is unfortunate that complacency is making such significant inroads into some people’s behavior.

On the brighter side of things, I am still enjoying hosting movies Thursday night (“The Matrix” this week), will be co-hosting a trivia contest Saturday evening, and am thoroughly enjoying many of the books that I brought down/was sent by friends and family/found on the shelves here. I have a good workout regimen six days per week, and I hope to play some of the music I’ve been working on at some point in the season.

“When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.”
~William Gibson, Zero History

Darkness/temps falling

Twilight continues to deepen, with the sun now over 8° below the horizon. Similarly, the temperatures have been on the cool side for here, with forecast taking us back (we did hit -100°F last Saturday, setting a record for earliest date that has happened in a given year) below the century mark. More instruments for winter-only research are coming online as it gets darker, and I am thoroughly enmeshed in doing updates to project documentation and inventories. Nothing too exciting or new is happening in that regard, but quiet is often the preferred state of affairs. Some of the subcontractors are having regular meetings to go through all the usual new-hire rigmarole, but thus far there has been very little from my new employer.

Recreation will be big this weekend, with observances of the anniversaries of Yuri Gagarin’s first manned flight to space and the wreck of the Titanic. My Thursday night movie tonight is the original “The Terminator”, which should be fun.

More and more stars are visible, as the twilight deepens. There was a brief aurora visible yesterday, which was the first for the winter. I think some of the crewmembers here for the first time were pretty excited. I opted to listen to its hiss on the VLF radio receiver here in the lab. It sounds sort of like bacon frying, if you know what to listen for amongst the other noise.

“Life for humans can consist only of climbing endless topless mountains, or eviscerating perpetually renewed dragons; there’s no safety in ease.”
~Brendan Phibbs, “Our War for the World”

Lights of a different variety

Though there is still a nice glow on the horizon from the recently-departed star that drives this Solar System, other lights have appeared in the sky in the last several days. There are some of the brighter stars that are already visible, including those constituting the Southern Cross constellation, which is pretty much directly overhead. The moon also popped above the horizon all orange and upside down, for those of us used to its boreal appearance, and it is rapidly climbing higher into the sky.

Temperatures are currently, as I write, are at -96.5°F and slowly creeping down. It is supposed to warm back up, but if we hit the century mark before local noon today it will be the record earliest that temperature will be hit here at Pole. Of course, folks are all abuzz at the usual prospects of what hitting -100°F (early in the season) provides with regards to recreational opportunities.

I fired up my three auroral cameras this week, but it is still too bright for some of them to operate or one of them to resolve anything but a very bright sky. As the sun and full moon wane, they will eventually begin imaging operations.

In general, things are going pretty much like usual for a winter running science projects here. Some instruments run reliably, some have problems, all of them require documentation updates from the last time I did them two years ago, etc.

“Science is a match that man has just got alight.”
~H.G. Wells

Off to a running start

Here are a couple of pictures from around station. Things are busy here this week with extra meetings for the new contractors, transitions to winter light protocol, and initial start-up of at least 3 auroral instruments' hardware prior to the data season's kick-off.

“If you look at nothing long enough, you see something, and it is beautiful.”
~Ernst Haas, Cactus Country

You people out in the rest of the world have really been busy in the last few days.

Mad props go to James Cameron and the whole Deepsea Challenger team that got the director of such fine films as “Aliens” and “The Abyss” to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the first (solo) crewed dive to that challenging destination since 1960. They did some really cool engineering with the “vertical torpedo” concept for the vehicle, not to mention developing some new materials to enable the design to work. It was pretty exciting to sit here at the bottom of the planet working at my desk while getting updates about somebody traveling to the bottom of the ocean.

I'd like to also congratulate the people of Marion, Kansas and the other participants from hither and yon on their successful bid to set the world for the most people roasting marshmallows at a single venue. I think the estimate was somewhere around 1,400 people wielding sticks with molten sugar on the end. When life gives you a wind storm and a huge pile of debris, make s'mores. Hopefully Guinness will give them the thumbs up on the new world record (the first of its kind), and not disqualify them due to some arcane rule they just made up about judging giant marshmallow roasting events.

Peeking through the power plant plume toward the radomes and cargo berms:

Sunset colors from the roof while up doing the inspiring task of clearing bathroom and furnace vents:

Leaving ARO, with the nascent bump of its annual leeward drift:

Clearing skies yield some gorgeous colors as the sun continues its slide below the horizon. Temperatures did not fall off as rapidly as predicted last week, but a pretty big drop is possibly in the works for the next day or so. Word of developments for full-timer hiring across the contract turnover is starting to flow, but much remains TBD. This could get interesting.

“His resolve is not to seem, but to be, the best.”
~Aeschylus, The Seven Against Thebes

Settling In

After some windy days with gusts over 30 knots, the skies are clearing and the temps are dropping into the -70°F range as the insulating layer disappears. There is a bit of a rosy glow out there, and it is a nice change of pace from the bi-color white and blue palette of the summer.

I have started working on some acoustic guitar songs to play solo if there might be an open mic night in the future here. I have also been playing around with my little guitar effects device (KORG Pandora PX4D), mostly using a synthesizer setting to play some of the intro music from the seminal dark future classic “Blade Runner”.

This is will be a big week for me. I will lose my job with one government contractor and be hired by another. My extended family will be extended by another person, which is rather exciting. And, we will finish up a successful month of Thursday night movies (the original Pole winter 2012 movie venue) along the theme of martial arts. I present those in no particular order, but you can probably infer what I really care about the most.

In general, the routine here has been laid for this chapter of the winter, and soon enough the winter-only projects will begin as it gets dark enough and a slightly new routine will hold sway until the horizon begins to glow again.

“…this was indeed a serious business: when the snow fell, getting out of here would not be a matter of an hour’s drive {to Sidewinder} but a major operation. They would sit up here in this deserted grand hotel, eating the food that had been left them like creatures in a fairy tale and listening to the bitter wind around their snowbound eaves.”
~ Stephen King, The Shining

Few pics from the 'hood

As promised, here are a few pictures taken out and about at Pole in the last several days.

"The plume" of the power plant, though unsightly, is a welcome omen that electrons are flowing at Pole. The sun continues its yearly plunge over the cryogenics facility.

A bit of wind kicks up ice crystals and drops visibility on the way back to the elevated station from the Atmospheric Research Observatory (ARO).

A darkened control room for some instruments run by yours truly at the Atmospheric Research Observatory.

Another view of the sun as it descends, shining through the pall of blowing ice and snow.

Two years later, and I'm in the same berthing room, with a slightly different view. The depression where the Dome was has drifted in some, but you can still discern it is lower than the surrounding areas. Vents for the sub-ice arches and the smokers' shack and its outhouse ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifre present in the foreground.

“Beautiful! Beautiful! Magnificent desolation.”
~Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr.