The South Pole Winter Games

I put this post together about a week and a half ago, but things got a little busy, so I got a little distracted and am just now getting it up. Hopefully, it isn't too late to be interesting!

The South Pole is one of the most isolated places in the world... especially during the long winter season. I have talked some in the past about the things we do to keep ourselves occupied here. We read, play games, play musical instruments, study. and hang out in our free time. We have had a handful of classes on astronomy, ham radio, and even now a programming class. We celebrate holidays like back home, and even a few holidays that are unique to the South Pole or Antarctica in general. I say all that to say that last week, we had an amazing time here on station. It started on July 3rd with the opening of the South Pole Winter Games. Over the course of the week, there were all sorts of competitions and tournaments many members of the station competed in for actual medals.  Sure, the gold medal isn't really made of gold, but the medals were put together by our machinist on station, and etched with "SPWG" as a reminder of the challenges endured and overcome over this glorious week of competition!

There were many "traditional" types of games including:

• Vertical Tower (Beer can) Sprint (Something like 80 steps at -70F in full cold weather gear)
• Individual Sled Pull (From the geographic pole to the ceremonial.. 150 yards?)
• Group Sled Pull (From the geographic pole to the ceremonial.. 150 yards?)
• Treadmill 10k (one guy did this in full fire gear... I have no idea why)
• Volleyball

A few less traditional games:

• Ping Pong
• Eight ball

And a few games that were a little more on the nerdy side of things:

• Settler's of Catan
• Supreme Commander
• Rubick's Cube
• Photography Contest (for pictures taken during the games)

Being the amazing athlete that I am... not, I only participated in volleyball and the Rubick's Cube competition. I only joined in volleyball as kind of a joke. The station physician's assistant and I decided to put together a team that would play just for fun and with absolutely no hope of winning. In all honesty, neither one of us really cared that much about it, and we figured we could find a third person for our team who was the same. Sadly for him, that person ended up being Martin. He was there when we formed the team, and I don't think he realized how little Catherine or I really cared about the game, but he wanted to join us. I think he would have done much better with a team that cared more, but he was a good sport, and I think all three of us had fun. I just want to caution you, if you see any supposed pictures of me in the tournament with pigtails and my shirt tied up over my belly, they are all fake.  Don't look at them. We don't need those kinds of fake pictures of me being absolutely ridiculous making their way around the interwebs! At any rate, the volleyball tournament went as I expected for us... we lost miserably, but we had some great fun during the game.

Most of the games took place throughout the week in evenings after the people on station finished with their daily work.  There were a few games on Sunday after the opening ceremonies and a few games on the last Sunday before the closing ceremony. In fact both of the competitions I participated in were on the last day. The volleyball tournament and the Rubick's Cube. As I said, we lost the volleyball tournament pretty bad.  The Rubick's Cube competition went much better. If you haven't figured it out, I am a bit of a nerd.  As a nerd, when I got on station last year, I thought to myself, "Now that I have some free time, what can I learn to do that would really impress the ladies?" The solution was obvious! It was time to learn the Rubick's Cube! I know, ladies, I just get more and more impressive with every passing day. Anyway, over the last several months, it has become a mindless thing I do with my hands just to pass time time when watching videos or watching the detector. I have a cube that I have solved over and over again.  So, when this competition was announced, I thought I might actually have a chance at a medal. Unfortunately, there is another guy on station who has been solving cubes much longer than I have, and he even taught me the first few steps on how to solve a Rubick's cube.  Suffice it to say that in general, he is faster than I am. That being said, sometimes you get lucky. On the last day of the games, right before the closing ceremonies, we had the Rubick's cube competition. I went first, convinced that I was in line for a silver medal. I took the cube, and got on the platform in front of about half the station and went to work as fast as I could. I ended up solving the cube in 1 minute and 3 seconds!  Not bad.  They then took the cube and mixed it up again, and handed it to Ryan, the sure favorite for gold. He stepped up on to the podium and quickly started to work the cube, but something happened! He made a mistake! It's not that uncommon to get a little distracted or to mix things up when trying to solve a Rubick's Cub; it just slows you down a bit, and he ended up falling just far enough behind that he finished in something like 1 minute 16 seconds! Somehow, things had come together, and now I was one of the lucky few to win a gold medal at the amazing South Pole Winter Games! A third person took the stand and I think had a time of a little over 10 minutes, but that is still pretty impressive to me given that a year ago I had no idea how to solve a Rubick's Cube at all.

After all the main competitions were over and we had passed out most of the medals, we finished with the photo contest. Applicants submitted a set of three photos. Adam ended up winning with a couple of amazing pictures and one that was truly glorious and magnificent, and I hope it never makes it to the Internet. I mean not because it was me looking and acting ridiculous or anything... Then the ceremony ended with the national anthem played on the electric guitar a la Jimi Hendrix. It turned out to be a really fun day.  Annnnnnd then there was an Acopian power supply failure out at the ICL and I had to go out and fix it.  You'd think that now that I am a South Pole Winter Games gold medal winner, I wouldn't have to deal with such trivial things, but alas, it is a harsh continent! So am I supposed to go to Disney World when I get home now?  Do they have special accommodations for gold medalists like me?

Below are a few pictures I was able to pull together. I hope you enjoy!

I won gold in the Rubik's Cube competition!

Here I am with my fancy new gold medal!

The medals before they were distributed

The IceCube Lab in the Moonlight!

More Aurora and Night Sky Pics from the South Pole!

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was going to try to get into a little night sky and aurora photography while down here at the South Pole. This was largely inspired by my friends and colleagues Martin and Robert who have done some amazing photography down here.  Well, really, it was inspired by them and my mom who kept bugging me to get my own pics.  In fairness it is nice to finally have a few of my own... So, I guess thanks Mom!  There are also a handful of others who are also taking some amazing pics, and hopefully in a future post I can link to some of their work as well.  In the mean time, I have put together a quick blog post with a few of my pics from a couple days ago. I went out to get a some photos of the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud, mostly because at the time it was finally clear and there weren't even any noticeable auroras out. I was actually talking to another person on station, Hunter who is another of our great photographers, and until recently he has been trying to get pictures of the Milky Way, but for him the aurora kept getting in the way!  I am a little less picky and don't mind the aurora, but thought I would take advantage of the clear skies to get in a few more traditional night sky shots.  It took me a few tries to really get the images I was trying to get, as you will see if you look at the full album linked to below.  Eventually, however, I got a few really good photos of the Milky Way and the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds.

As it turns out, however, you can't go very long without those "pesky" auroras showing back up down here! After taking a few of the more traditional pictures, I ended up getting a ton of aurora shots.  It was actually surprising how bright some of the aurora were after it had been so clear! They were also very dynamic, so I was able to get a ton of different shots all within a relatively short amount of time. I am still experimenting with the photography so that is why some pictures are brighter than others.  I also don't do any post-editing which could bring out some of the colors a little better. I might do this in the future, but for now, the pictures are a little more raw.

The photos below are a small selection of the full set with a little bit of commentary.  The full album is located at  https://goo.gl/photos/rCrTdSzRFdYtV8Xy8.
 

The Milky Way with the Large Magellanic Cloud in the upper left corner!

The Large Magellanic Cloud (center-ish) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (upper-left-ish).

Me, auroras, and the Milky Way!

I really like the structure of this one.

This one looks like a bird to me... maybe a phoenix!

Aurora under the Milky way!

The flag line leading to the dark sector is lit up with auroras!

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!

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

Martin laying down in front of the ceremonial South Pole and the station, looking at the stars and aurora - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

Martin standing in front of the station with aurora in the background - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

Aurora over the South Pole Telescope (SPT) - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

Aurora over the station - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

Aurora over the station observation deck - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

The IceCube Lab in the starlight - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

The moon over the South Pole station - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

Martin out in front of some aurora - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

Martin got this pic of our station physician assistant taking pictures of aurora... How meta!

This is a shot of our station physician watching the aurora - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

Another aurora shot with the Milky Way in the background - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

A shot of the Large Magellenic Cloud from the South Pole - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

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

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