This is just a quick update post. I am trying to get into a habit of regular blogging, and I have a few things I'd like to get posted, so I am starting with a shorter post while I work on some of the other posts. The last week and a half has been pretty amazing. One of the final duties as an IceCube winterover is to make a couple of presentations at one of the collaboration meetings. Our collaboration meetings are like scientific conferences, but almost everyone participating is IceCube. We do invite a few other science speakers to give talks, but really the focus is to get everyone in the IceCube collaboration together a couple times a year in one location to make working together a little easier. The reality is we have around 250 people in our collaboration, and they are spread out all over the world. Most of what we do is done over email or phone calls, but sometimes, you can make things go so much faster face to face.
This year the IceCube Spring Collaboration Meeting was at my alma mater, Georgia Tech! Since my fellow winterover, friend, and colleague, Martin was going to be in town from Germany, a few other winterovers decided we would get together and have a camping trip up in North Georgia before the meeting. So Martin flew in a few days early, and along with 6 other winterovers (and one of their girlfriends), we spent a few days camping up in Black Rock State Park. After a year of working together in one of the most isolated places in the world, you tend to form some close friendships, and it turns out these friendships don't exactly just disappear when you get off the ice. So we had an amazing time and were able to catch up for a bit. After this Martin and I drove down to the GT campus. I'll be honest... I was super excited. Not only did I get to see my IceCube friends that I hadn't seen in a while, but also, I was able to hang out with some GT buddies again. While most of my grad student friends have graduated, I was able to chat with a few professors and a few other local friends.
The meeting went very well. I gave two joint talks with Martin, a public talk and a collaboration report. I also had a sit-down with some members of the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics where I showed a few pics and answered a few questions. Interestingly, I was able to meet up with a few family members as well. My dad's cousin and her husband, who found me on Facebook while I was at the South Pole, came to the public talk as did some cousins from my mom's side of the family. It was great to have family come and see one of my talks.
So all in all it was a pretty good week. Now that I am back in Huntsville, I have a ton of things I need to get done, but that is going to have to wait for another post!
Showing posts with label icecube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label icecube. Show all posts
Monday, May 14, 2018
Friday, December 22, 2017
Traveling Australia
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| Sunset from our dive boat on the Great Barrier Reef! |
After I got off the Ice, I think I needed to clear my head a bit. Being at the South Pole for a year can have a mental impact, but more than that, we had the delays getting out as I mentioned in the last post. That being said, now I have been traveling a bit, and I think I am going to try to blog a little more frequently. Of course I have said that many times, so we will see how things actually go. Also, I have updated the name of the blog. Originally, my intention was to focus a little more on science, but given that most of my posts have been about and will be about travel, I have changed it up a little for the time being, not that I am particularly thrilled with the title anyway, but it will do for now. Also as a side note... Photo album links at the bottom for those who want more pictures!
Starting out - Cairns
As I stated in my last post, I wasn't able to spend much time in New Zealand, due to my flight delays out of Antarctica. After we made it to New Zealand, I spent my time getting ready for the rest of my travel. The first stop, and the topic of this post, was Australia! I have been a scuba diver for number of years. During grad school, however, my diving along with many of my other hobbies slowed way down. Right before I was offered the position at the South Pole, I decided that it was a good time to get back into it a bit. I went down to the rock quarry in Pelham, Alabama and did a quick refresher and got a few dives in. I was gearing up for more diving over the next couple months, when I got the call about the job at the South Pole... So my diving stopped AGAIN! Though that was a small price to pay for the most amazing job in the world. While at the South Pole, I decided that I would have to go diving when I got back, and where better to dive than the Great Barrier Reef? So in my post-ice travel planning, the first stop became a dive trip in Australia. I talked to a few people and one company was recommended, Prodive. Actually, it was only thing I booked while in Antarctica, outside of my plane tickets. I didn't even start booking hotels anywhere until I got off the Ice.
So my first stop on my tour home was Cairns, Australia. I got in a few days before the dive so I could relax and wonder around the town a bit. I ended up hitting up a few pubs throughout that time, including an Irish pub that at one point had Sweet Home Alabama playing. I also decided to hit up the local aquarium before my dive. I'm glad I did! I got a few interesting pics while there, primarily for my nephew who was in a bit of a shark phase a while back.
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| A hammerhead shark I saw in the Cairns Aquarium |
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| Getting ready for a dive on the Reef! |
coral structures. We also saw a few turtles, as you can see below. It was an amazing experience.
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| A turtle we saw while diving |
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| Everyone in Australia was getting ready for Christmas! |
After the dive trip we went back to Cairns where I spent another couple days relaxing and planning. At this point, I actually had no idea where I was going next. I even had to extend my hotel an extra night so I could figure things out. I toyed with a few ideas, but then settled on a quick hop to Sydney and then Adelaide. Honestly, the biggest reason I wanted to go to Sydney was to see the Sydney Opera House. IceCube has some collaborators in Adelaide, so I figured I would show up and see if they were around. I figured between Cairns, Sydney, and Adelaide I'd get a little bit of varied Australian Experience.
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| The iconic bridge across from the Opera House... I think this is where they shoot off fireworks during new years! |
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| Me with the Opera House in the background |
Sydney was actually pretty nice. It is a much bigger city than I realized. I hit the ground running there. The truth is I am probably spending way too much money on some parts of travel, but since this is supposed to be an epic travel vacation, I figure I can live with it to some degree, but in order to mitigate the costs a bit, I decided not to spend to much time in Sydney since it was so expensive. I was able to get a pretty nice tour of the Opera House early on my first full day in town. It turns out the Royal Botanical Gardens are right next to the Opera House, so I went there as well. It was a great time. Other than that I did a little exploring and hit up a couple local bars/pubs. It was a pretty laid back trip.
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| A view from the tour inside the Opera House |
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| Another inside shot of the Opera House |
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| An interesting bird I saw in the botanical gardens |
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| A sundial in the botanical gardens |
Adelaide
After Sydney, I flew off for a few days in Adelaide, which has a much smaller feel to it. I actually went to the mall there on one day since I had to get a few things. While I was there, I was able to meet up with a few of my IceCube friends Sally, Gary, and Ben. The truth is that ever since I heard IceCube had people down in Australia, I kinda wanted to visit. Thankfully, they were actually in town when I got there! I probably should have checked ahead of time, but where is the fun in that? It was really great to see them and hang out with them for a couple of evenings. Another surprise along those lines was meeting up with a fellow winterover Rick. He and his girlfriend happened to be passing through Adelaide on their way from Darwin down to Sydney. I was able to hang out with them and have a couple drinks as they passed through town. That was great and totally unexpected!
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| I was told these were pretty iconic for Adelaide |
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| Another Adelaide Icon |
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| Sunset on the beach with Gary and Sally |
While I was at the South Pole, a couple of guys there gave a wine class that I partcipated in, and one of the regions they actually mentioned was called the Barossa Valley near Adelaide. So, one day while I was there I joined a tour of the Barossa Valley that included a couple of wine tastings including one at the Seppeltsfield winery and the Wolf Blass winery. The truth is, I still don't know much about wine and am not very sophisticated in respect to wine, but it was a fun time. At Seppeltsfield they had a port (which I think they call a tawny for legal reasons since port has to come from Portugal?) that was aged 100 years. They didn't let us taste that one, but I did get a picture of the bottle of ~$2000 AUD port.
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| This was NOT on the tasting menu... around $2000 AUD for that bottle! |
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| But they let us take a picture with it, and I was very careful not to drop it! |
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| Me at the Wolf Blass Winery |
On the last part of the tour we visited Hahndorf which is one of the oldest German settlements in the area if I remember correctly. It was ok... nothing spectacular. On the way back, however, the bus driver told us to keep our eyes open in the top of trees on the side of the road as there might be Koalas up there. One lady with a sharp eye spotted one. The bus driver actually pulled over, and we all got out of the bus to look and take pictures. It was actually pretty awesome.
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| Koala!!! |
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| For Martin! (kind of an inside joke) |
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| Getting ready for Christmas! |
And as promised... here are the links to the full albums!
Adelaide - https://photos.app.goo.gl/9ZkPNM1F3kAVgxtB2
Sunday, September 24, 2017
Sunrise at the South Pole!
It has been way too long since my last post. Part of the reason is that I have been waiting on some media get get posted online. Last month, I was invited to remotely participate in a radio program (Inside the Black Box) on WREK radio, the Georgia Tech radio station. I spent some time talking about the science I am a part of down here at the South Pole and then I spent some time talking about life here. I was hoping that the audio from the program would be posted soon, but unfortunately, it still isn't up. As soon as it gets posted online, I will post a link, but in the mean time, I figured it was about time to give another update. To be completely honest and open, there is another reason I haven't posted. It turns out that being in such an isolated place as this does sometimes get to you a little bit. It is not necessarily a bad thing, but there have been more than a few days that I have felt like I was walking around in a haze with little to no motivation to do anything more than what was required. Don't get me wrong, I have tried to stay active in the community for the most part, and of course, Martin and I have kept the detector as our top priority, but really, I have watched more of The Simpsons in the past couple months than I really care to admit! That being said, the past couple of months started out kinda slow, but now we are getting ready to open the station for summer, so things have started to get busy. Not to mention there is an IceCube Collaboration meeting coming up, so there have been a few requests from the north for extra calibration data and work on the detector. The activity on station the past week or so is kind of helping jar me back into reality a bit.
In general, though, station life is still going well. There have been lots of activities to get involved in over the past couple of months. There was a wine class Martin and I participated in. We did a programming class that I helped teach. There was an eight-ball tournament and even a beer pong tournament. I didn't really participate in either of those, but several others did. We have had several movie nights with new movies when we can get them and some classics for those interested in older movies, and everything in between. The biggest event lately has been sunrise. We have had several months of darkness and very recently, the sun started to rise above the horizon here. We only get one sunset and one sunrise a year at the South Pole, but they last for days at a time! That being said one of the big events down here is the Sunrise Dinner. We all got together over this last weekend and had another big wonderful meal prepared by our amazing cooks on site. Before the meal, they raffled off the flags that have sit around the ceremonial South Pole marker for the past year. Earlier in the day they removed the old ones and put up new ones. Sadly, I didn't win one of the flags, but I am very happy for those who did. Afterwards, a couple of us snuck out to have some sunrise cigars. It was a great night.
One aspect of the sunrise that I will mention for you ham radio nerds is that now the propagation on 20m and 40m has greatly improved. During the long winter, I was able to make very few contacts. In just a couple weeks now, I have made over 350 contacts with people from the north! One goal that I am trying to hit is to make over a thousand contacts starting two weeks ago before I leave the station. For all those other hams interested, I am generally on 20m at around 14.243 MHz when the band is open. If 20m is closed and 40m is open, I will hang around 7.178 MHz or 7.182 MHz. I am trying to get on the radio around sunset or sunrise stateside, mostly but not limited to the weekends. Oh, and I have spent a little time with the fine folks on the Reddit Ham Radio IRC channel answer lots of questions about the South Pole, so this is a shout out to them!
Now that we are so close to station opening, things have really started to get busy. There has been a ton of prep on the station itself including increased cleaning duties around station, for starters. But the really big thing is that most of us are getting ready to leave and eventually head home. For many of us, this means some kind of traveling. I've heard that some people have even started packing, but that is kinda funny to me as we still have over a month left! I personally have been working on my travel plans. Right now, my plans are to spend a couple weeks in New Zealand, followed by travel to Australia, South East Asia, India, then hit Egypt, Morocco, and the Namibia area in Africa before actually getting home in mid February. It turns out, it will be about 3 months of travel, but this is an opportunity I can't pass up! I've already booked a dive trip in Australia and am looking into a camping trip in Namibia! I almost have all my flight plans in order, and over the next couple of weeks, I will be taking care of Visa issues.
So far I am still loving my time down here, but I am definitely ready for warmer conditions with grass and trees and oxygen (we're at around 10,000ft). As I have said before many times, though.... I know I am going to miss this amazing place when I leave!
In general, though, station life is still going well. There have been lots of activities to get involved in over the past couple of months. There was a wine class Martin and I participated in. We did a programming class that I helped teach. There was an eight-ball tournament and even a beer pong tournament. I didn't really participate in either of those, but several others did. We have had several movie nights with new movies when we can get them and some classics for those interested in older movies, and everything in between. The biggest event lately has been sunrise. We have had several months of darkness and very recently, the sun started to rise above the horizon here. We only get one sunset and one sunrise a year at the South Pole, but they last for days at a time! That being said one of the big events down here is the Sunrise Dinner. We all got together over this last weekend and had another big wonderful meal prepared by our amazing cooks on site. Before the meal, they raffled off the flags that have sit around the ceremonial South Pole marker for the past year. Earlier in the day they removed the old ones and put up new ones. Sadly, I didn't win one of the flags, but I am very happy for those who did. Afterwards, a couple of us snuck out to have some sunrise cigars. It was a great night.
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| The sun starting to rise at the South Pole early last week! |
One aspect of the sunrise that I will mention for you ham radio nerds is that now the propagation on 20m and 40m has greatly improved. During the long winter, I was able to make very few contacts. In just a couple weeks now, I have made over 350 contacts with people from the north! One goal that I am trying to hit is to make over a thousand contacts starting two weeks ago before I leave the station. For all those other hams interested, I am generally on 20m at around 14.243 MHz when the band is open. If 20m is closed and 40m is open, I will hang around 7.178 MHz or 7.182 MHz. I am trying to get on the radio around sunset or sunrise stateside, mostly but not limited to the weekends. Oh, and I have spent a little time with the fine folks on the Reddit Ham Radio IRC channel answer lots of questions about the South Pole, so this is a shout out to them!
Now that we are so close to station opening, things have really started to get busy. There has been a ton of prep on the station itself including increased cleaning duties around station, for starters. But the really big thing is that most of us are getting ready to leave and eventually head home. For many of us, this means some kind of traveling. I've heard that some people have even started packing, but that is kinda funny to me as we still have over a month left! I personally have been working on my travel plans. Right now, my plans are to spend a couple weeks in New Zealand, followed by travel to Australia, South East Asia, India, then hit Egypt, Morocco, and the Namibia area in Africa before actually getting home in mid February. It turns out, it will be about 3 months of travel, but this is an opportunity I can't pass up! I've already booked a dive trip in Australia and am looking into a camping trip in Namibia! I almost have all my flight plans in order, and over the next couple of weeks, I will be taking care of Visa issues.
So far I am still loving my time down here, but I am definitely ready for warmer conditions with grass and trees and oxygen (we're at around 10,000ft). As I have said before many times, though.... I know I am going to miss this amazing place when I leave!
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| A photo from earlier this year showing the Ceremonial South Pole Marker and some of the flags that were passed out to winterover at the Sunrise Diner! |
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Aurora and time lapse photography from the South Pole!
The past couple of weeks have been busy and exciting here at the South Pole. There has been a great deal of activity with the detector, but also, the moon has set, which means that the aurora are visible again. The moon is so bright that when it is up it obscures all but the brightest of aurora and even those aren't as exciting when you try to view them under a full moon. Now that the moon has set and it has gotten dark, many of the photographers on station have broken out their cameras again and there will be more photos flooding their various social media accounts!
Before we get into the aurora, it is worth noting that IceCube had some big happenings last week. We generally run our detector configuration a year at a time. It's not that there is a big difference from one year to the next most of the time, but it is a way we can break our data and filtering up into more manageable segments. Most of our offline analyses are actually done a year at a time or with collections of "years" of data. Last week, we transitioned from our 2016 physics run to our 2017 physics run. This marks another year of successful data collection by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory! Martin and I assisted some of the scientists and technicians in the North in the transition. This process involves updating some software on the detector, and in this case, we actually retired an older system in favor of a newer and hopefully more robust one. Overall the transition went well, and we are excited to be starting another year of particle astrophysics research with one of the greatest experiments ever built... not that I am in any way biased or anything!
Not only do I get to work on such an amazing experiment, but I am also very happy to say that I get to live an amazing environment. Mostly, I don't spend a great deal of time outside, but when I do, there are times that I am treated to one of the most amazing light shows I have ever seen. Martin and I had to do some repairs the other day out at the IceCube Lab. Just as a reminder, this is a 3/4 of mile walk away in temperatures that lately range from around -70F to -80F with wind chills well below -100F. While out there, Martin set up his camera to do a short time lapse (available soon for the public?). He got some amazing shots, including one of the stills below. After we had finished our work, we headed back, but the aurora were so amazing, we stopped several times to admire them. Martin even tried to get a few more shots in before his camera froze. I have included one below that he took of me in front of the aurora. For those interested in more of his photography, here again is a link to his flikr account:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/135762220@N06
Here in the near future, I think I am going to try my hand at a little bit of aurora photography. I don't know that I will be able to get anywhere near as good as Martin is, but maybe I can get a few good shots in here or there.
Besides Martin, there are also a few other people on station who have gone out several times to get aurora shots. One in particular is Robert Schwarz. Robert has spent more time at the South Pole than any other person ever. He is currently working on his 13th winter at pole, and is planning to come back next year for one more winter. Over the years, he has developed a skill at photographing aurora this includes a great deal of time lapse photography as well. He has a few websites with many pictures and his time lapses posted. I encourage you to check them out.
http://www.antarctic-adventures.de
http://www.facebook.com/southpoleskies
http://www.vimeo.com/polarlights
Between Martin and Robert and several of the others who I will try to link to in the future, we have an amazing group of photographers down here! They have done an amazing job of capturing the beauty that we get to see down here on a fairly regular basis, barring light pollution from the moon!
Other than that, things have mostly been going as usual. I am still working on learning French, and I think I am about to start on Russian. I have been practicing more on the violin, and I am starting to think about trying to memorize a few specific pieces I have been working on. I was trying to read a science paper a day, but that has slowed down a bit over the past week. I am hoping to get a little more focused on that over the next week or so and maybe do some extra reading to get caught up. That being said, I am sure I know why you are all really reading this blog, so here are the pictures!
Before we get into the aurora, it is worth noting that IceCube had some big happenings last week. We generally run our detector configuration a year at a time. It's not that there is a big difference from one year to the next most of the time, but it is a way we can break our data and filtering up into more manageable segments. Most of our offline analyses are actually done a year at a time or with collections of "years" of data. Last week, we transitioned from our 2016 physics run to our 2017 physics run. This marks another year of successful data collection by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory! Martin and I assisted some of the scientists and technicians in the North in the transition. This process involves updating some software on the detector, and in this case, we actually retired an older system in favor of a newer and hopefully more robust one. Overall the transition went well, and we are excited to be starting another year of particle astrophysics research with one of the greatest experiments ever built... not that I am in any way biased or anything!
Not only do I get to work on such an amazing experiment, but I am also very happy to say that I get to live an amazing environment. Mostly, I don't spend a great deal of time outside, but when I do, there are times that I am treated to one of the most amazing light shows I have ever seen. Martin and I had to do some repairs the other day out at the IceCube Lab. Just as a reminder, this is a 3/4 of mile walk away in temperatures that lately range from around -70F to -80F with wind chills well below -100F. While out there, Martin set up his camera to do a short time lapse (available soon for the public?). He got some amazing shots, including one of the stills below. After we had finished our work, we headed back, but the aurora were so amazing, we stopped several times to admire them. Martin even tried to get a few more shots in before his camera froze. I have included one below that he took of me in front of the aurora. For those interested in more of his photography, here again is a link to his flikr account:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/135762220@N06
Here in the near future, I think I am going to try my hand at a little bit of aurora photography. I don't know that I will be able to get anywhere near as good as Martin is, but maybe I can get a few good shots in here or there.
Besides Martin, there are also a few other people on station who have gone out several times to get aurora shots. One in particular is Robert Schwarz. Robert has spent more time at the South Pole than any other person ever. He is currently working on his 13th winter at pole, and is planning to come back next year for one more winter. Over the years, he has developed a skill at photographing aurora this includes a great deal of time lapse photography as well. He has a few websites with many pictures and his time lapses posted. I encourage you to check them out.
http://www.antarctic-adventures.de
http://www.facebook.com/southpoleskies
http://www.vimeo.com/polarlights
Between Martin and Robert and several of the others who I will try to link to in the future, we have an amazing group of photographers down here! They have done an amazing job of capturing the beauty that we get to see down here on a fairly regular basis, barring light pollution from the moon!
Other than that, things have mostly been going as usual. I am still working on learning French, and I think I am about to start on Russian. I have been practicing more on the violin, and I am starting to think about trying to memorize a few specific pieces I have been working on. I was trying to read a science paper a day, but that has slowed down a bit over the past week. I am hoping to get a little more focused on that over the next week or so and maybe do some extra reading to get caught up. That being said, I am sure I know why you are all really reading this blog, so here are the pictures!
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| Martin snapped this picture of me (James) in front of some aurora and the South Pole Telescope (SPT) on our way back from fixing hardware problems at the ICL - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Martin laying down in front of the ceremonial South Pole and the station, looking at the stars and aurora - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Martin standing in front of the station with aurora in the background - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Aurora over the South Pole Telescope (SPT) - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Aurora over the station - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Aurora over the station observation deck - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| The IceCube Lab in the starlight - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| The moon over the South Pole station - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Martin out in front of some aurora - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Martin got this pic of our station physician assistant taking pictures of aurora... How meta! |
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| This is a shot of our station physician watching the aurora - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Another aurora shot with the Milky Way in the background - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| A shot of the Large Magellenic Cloud from the South Pole - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Martin and James posed for a picture in front of the ICL to send to the IceCube Collaboration during their most recent meeting - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| 16 Hour Dark Sector Time Lapse at the South Pole (you may need to click on this one to really see it) - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
Monday, May 01, 2017
Six Months at the South Pole!
Today is a very exciting day for me! It marks six months at the South Pole. I arrived here on November 2, 2016, a few days before my last birthday, and I have been here six months as of today. It has been a wonderful adventure so far and I am looking forward to the next six months, especially now that the sun has set, and we are having some amazing views of the night sky with the stars, milky way, and especially the auroras!
Over the past few weeks, life on station has been fairly routine. The temperatures went up a bit for a while, but are now holding around -90F with a wind chill of around -130F. I generally get up every day and the first thing I do is check email and check on the experiment I am working on, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. I then try to move on to personal projects, assuming everything is running well and no one from the IceCube group up North has any requests. Thankfully, the detector has been running very smooth lately, and with the exception of a few small problems and some calibration work, there hasn't been much that we've had to do. As it turns out, however, the one "big" problem we had to deal with lately was a failed power supply a few days ago. For some reason since winter started, I have moved more to a night schedule. Really, this doesn't make much sense, as it is always dark here since the sunset, but somehow, even without any real sense of day or night, I still moved to a night schedule. That being said, a few days ago, I had just fallen asleep when I got a call from Martin about the power supply which failed a little after breakfast. Thankfully, Martin was on call and it was his turn to go out and replace the power supply. Unfortunately, when he got out there, it looked the like the problem was bigger than expected and I ended up having to go out and help. Generally, it isn't that big a deal, but now that it is has gotten colder, and since our lab is about 3/4 of a mile away from the main station, by the time I walk out there my balaclava (face mask) has frozen over making it fairly difficult to breath... not to mention we are still at roughly 10,000 ft altitude. Suffice it to say, that walking out to the ICL and back can wear you out! At any rate, after I got out there, Martin and I did our work which ended up taking a few hours, and then I headed back to station for lunch and to get some sleep. Martin, however, stayed out to get some more amazing pictures. Overall it turned out to be a pretty long day, but it was still a good day, all things considered.
For the most part, winter has been an amazing time. The last power supply failure we had before this week was a couple months ago, and beyond that, our work has mostly been the occasional calibration run. I have been thinking back some over the past few months, and I remember when I first arrived, and we spent the summer working and preparing for winter. Even then I enjoyed my time here, but since the winter season officially started mid-February with all of the summer people leaving, the station has taken on a much different atmosphere. It almost feels like a totally different place. I had heard from some of the previous winterovers how much better it is in winter, and looking back now, I definitely have to agree. Life is much more laid back now, and our interactions are so much more personal now that we only have 46 people on station. There have obviously been a few small conflicts here and there, but in general, everyone seems to be getting along very well. The people here on station come from all walks of life and political and philosophical backgrounds, but we respect each other and have learned to live together peaceably.
As for my personal projects, I am making progress, more some days than others. I have been practicing the violin regularly, and there are times I really enjoy it. Other times, it takes a little motivation to get myself to practice, but in the end it seems to be worth it as I feel that I have at least improved some over the past couple months. I have been reading a ton, mostly science papers, and I have also been working on some computer projects. I have been playing around with and reviewing some network security ideas and practices, but I have also spent some time playing around with statistics and some programming languages. In particular, I have been trying to spend some time learning ROOT and Octave, as they have some very powerful tools for statistical analysis. There have also been a few other little computer projects here and there. I am behind on my language studies, but not irreparably so. I haven't spent much time on Duolingo over the past week and half, but I am hoping to jump back into it in the next day or two. I have also been thinking about a few other small projects that I had planned for the winter. I'd like to spend some time studying for my instrument rating, and I would like to spend some time really learning Morse code. As of right now, these are not high priority, but maybe I'll start working on them soon.
Overall, things are going well. I am still very happy to be here. The past couple of weeks, I have gone outside regularly to watch the auroras and see the stars. It is kind of a surreal experience. I have never lived in a place where you could step out at any time of day and there is a chance you'll see auroras. On that note, my friend and colleague Martin has take some amazing aurora pictures. I am posting some of them below, particularly for those of you who have not seen them already on facebook, but please check out his flickr account (https://www.flickr.com/photos/135762220@N06) for even more!
Over the past few weeks, life on station has been fairly routine. The temperatures went up a bit for a while, but are now holding around -90F with a wind chill of around -130F. I generally get up every day and the first thing I do is check email and check on the experiment I am working on, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. I then try to move on to personal projects, assuming everything is running well and no one from the IceCube group up North has any requests. Thankfully, the detector has been running very smooth lately, and with the exception of a few small problems and some calibration work, there hasn't been much that we've had to do. As it turns out, however, the one "big" problem we had to deal with lately was a failed power supply a few days ago. For some reason since winter started, I have moved more to a night schedule. Really, this doesn't make much sense, as it is always dark here since the sunset, but somehow, even without any real sense of day or night, I still moved to a night schedule. That being said, a few days ago, I had just fallen asleep when I got a call from Martin about the power supply which failed a little after breakfast. Thankfully, Martin was on call and it was his turn to go out and replace the power supply. Unfortunately, when he got out there, it looked the like the problem was bigger than expected and I ended up having to go out and help. Generally, it isn't that big a deal, but now that it is has gotten colder, and since our lab is about 3/4 of a mile away from the main station, by the time I walk out there my balaclava (face mask) has frozen over making it fairly difficult to breath... not to mention we are still at roughly 10,000 ft altitude. Suffice it to say, that walking out to the ICL and back can wear you out! At any rate, after I got out there, Martin and I did our work which ended up taking a few hours, and then I headed back to station for lunch and to get some sleep. Martin, however, stayed out to get some more amazing pictures. Overall it turned out to be a pretty long day, but it was still a good day, all things considered.
For the most part, winter has been an amazing time. The last power supply failure we had before this week was a couple months ago, and beyond that, our work has mostly been the occasional calibration run. I have been thinking back some over the past few months, and I remember when I first arrived, and we spent the summer working and preparing for winter. Even then I enjoyed my time here, but since the winter season officially started mid-February with all of the summer people leaving, the station has taken on a much different atmosphere. It almost feels like a totally different place. I had heard from some of the previous winterovers how much better it is in winter, and looking back now, I definitely have to agree. Life is much more laid back now, and our interactions are so much more personal now that we only have 46 people on station. There have obviously been a few small conflicts here and there, but in general, everyone seems to be getting along very well. The people here on station come from all walks of life and political and philosophical backgrounds, but we respect each other and have learned to live together peaceably.
As for my personal projects, I am making progress, more some days than others. I have been practicing the violin regularly, and there are times I really enjoy it. Other times, it takes a little motivation to get myself to practice, but in the end it seems to be worth it as I feel that I have at least improved some over the past couple months. I have been reading a ton, mostly science papers, and I have also been working on some computer projects. I have been playing around with and reviewing some network security ideas and practices, but I have also spent some time playing around with statistics and some programming languages. In particular, I have been trying to spend some time learning ROOT and Octave, as they have some very powerful tools for statistical analysis. There have also been a few other little computer projects here and there. I am behind on my language studies, but not irreparably so. I haven't spent much time on Duolingo over the past week and half, but I am hoping to jump back into it in the next day or two. I have also been thinking about a few other small projects that I had planned for the winter. I'd like to spend some time studying for my instrument rating, and I would like to spend some time really learning Morse code. As of right now, these are not high priority, but maybe I'll start working on them soon.
Overall, things are going well. I am still very happy to be here. The past couple of weeks, I have gone outside regularly to watch the auroras and see the stars. It is kind of a surreal experience. I have never lived in a place where you could step out at any time of day and there is a chance you'll see auroras. On that note, my friend and colleague Martin has take some amazing aurora pictures. I am posting some of them below, particularly for those of you who have not seen them already on facebook, but please check out his flickr account (https://www.flickr.com/photos/135762220@N06) for even more!
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| The moon and stars from the South Pole! - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Auroras over the dark sector - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Martin in front of the station with an aurora in the background - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| The IceCube Lab with auroras in the background - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Aurora and the moon from the station observation deck - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| The station with an aurora in the background - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| More auroras - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| Another Shot of the station with auroras - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| A coronal aurora from the South Pole! - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
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| One last shot of the station with auroras - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF |
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
It's getting dark at the South Pole!
Cold temperature warnings aside, our weather here has been all over the place. The temperatures last week got as high as -45F. That is far warmer than I would have expected, considering that I just heard tonight we might hit -90F by this weekend! The funny thing about that is that I am getting used to the colder temperatures here. I actually went out for a few minutes a few nights ago onto one of the decks wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. In fairness, I didn't stay out long, only a minute or two, but it is kinda funny to me that I was even able to get out for that long! As I have mentioned in a previous posts, we had to cover all of the windows on station to prevent light from the station from interfering with some experiments here. If we want to see what it looks like outside, we actually have to go outside. So the other night I went out to see how things were looking. It was actually pretty amazing. I almost got a little giddy, staring up and the first few stars to be visible. I am still so excited to be down here right now as it is getting darker and the long winter night is starting. The sun set here a few weeks ago, but it is still not completely dark. It has gotten dark enough, though, that now we are starting to see more and more stars. In fact, last night I went out and saw the very first aurora of my life! It was very faint and hard to see, but even still it was amazing. I am really looking forward to the days ahead as it gets even darker and there are more stars and aurora visible.
Other than that, I have been staying busy as usually with my winter projects. I have been teaching a ham radio class here that seems to be going well, though at times a little slower than I am used to. Normally I would teach this class in roughly 6 hours strait, but I have spread it out over a couple of months down here. If everything works out, and I can get things organized with the ARRL, we should be able to offer the ham radio license exams sometime next month! I have also been doing language studies every day. I finished going back through Spanish on Duolingo, and soon I will be trying to supplement with more external resources. In the mean time I am still practicing French and thinking about adding Russian soon. I have been practicing the violin a few times a week, and I am enjoying that. The only area where I am a little behind is reading, but I have been making progress, just not as much as I would like. Thankfully, I still have some time, and I am confident that it will all work out in the end.
I know it probably sounds a little cheesy, and you may be getting tired of me saying it, but I am still so happy to be here right now. I have a great job facilitating scientific research on one of the most amazing astrophysical experiments in the world. I am about to see stars and auroras from an amazing location that few people will ever visit, much less at night. I am living and working with an amazing group of people here, and I am truly enjoying this adventure.
As it gets a little darker, I hope to add more pictures, particularly of the stars and auroras. Until then, here are a couple I took the other day. These are probably not the greatest pictures, but hopefully, I can get some more of Martin's amazing photography soon and get those posted.
The South Pole Telescope (SPT), Bicep, and Keck at dusk.
A zoomed in view of SPT, Bicep, and Keck!
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