Hang test

Yesterday (Wednesday) we had a hang test, which means we hung the instrument from the launch vehicle (a fancy crane) and ran it for hours while all the communications were tested.  The instrument passed, with only a few glitches, which we were able to correct or magically fixed themselves.  Not all the CSBF communications worked though, so we will go back outside to test them after they get fixed.  We also forgot to test uplinking through all three available communications channels (for the geeks among you, they are line-of-sight telemetry, TDRSS satellite, and Iridium satellite).

Sadly, my errant problem child showed it's true colors during the test. The pattern is that when it's warm, it works, when it's cold, it doesn't.  There's probably a cold-solder joint in the tube base.  Anyway, the upshot is that I can either make sure it keeps warm in flight by putting an electric blanket on it, or replace it. The first requires power and wiring, and runs the risk of our guess as to how much blanket to use being too much or too little. The latter runs the risk of damaging the detector during the switch (I have to tear into a wrap job and pry off a glued disk) and then having the new tube be just as flaky as the old one.

A replacement is a two day affair; I still want to see a "smoking gun" piece of evidence for the tube being the source of the trouble.  When we roll out to retest the communications, I'll watch the tube quit working, then wrap it in handwarmers to see if it comes back.  If it does, then I choose between the options outlined above.

We are only a few days from being flight ready, at which point it becomes a waiting game. The winds aloft have to be just right, and they are currently not predicted to set in before December 15, and likely later than that but still before Christmas. It's time for me to start thinking about coming home. I put in my request this morning for a 12 December departure from McMurdo.  I do not plan to stay for the launch. I'll be a US data-watcher while the instrument is in the air. 

In other news, my small camera has bitten the dust. The lens will no longer retract on my Canon Powershot. After much internet surfing and some camera deconstructing, it is now even worse than it was.  I guess I know what I'll soon be buying a new one of. In the meantime, I am hauling around my Nikon, which is not nearly so convenient.

Fully Operational Death Star

Stephane gets the squeeze beneath the instrument

The last two days have seen a great deal of progress in preparing the instrument for flight. We think we will have a "hang test" on Thursday, in which we simulate the conditions of flight by hanging from the crane, relying solely on radio communications, then declare "flight ready" directly afterwards.  I then foresee hanging around for about  a week being trained to operate the instrument during flight and getting in some of the last minute visits to places around here that I have thus far been too busy to do: climb Castle Rock again, go on a pressure ridges tour, and go skiing one more time.

We managed to fix a bothersome problem with the veto calibration system.  The signal from an LED pulser was not bright enough to fire our phototube detectors, so we had to figure out how to make it brighter. After much sleuthing, we discovered that an attenuator (ie piece of dark plastic) had been put along the light path to purposefully dim the signal earlier. We removed that (at great danger to Stephane's physical well-being) and are now fully calibrating.  We still have one nagging problem-child phototube which sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. We need to figure it out in the coming week.  Loose cable? Cold solder joint?  Bad PMT? The mystery continues.

Fully operational Death Star, sunbathing with friendly neighbor

Today the weather was spectacular. We are getting warm (35 F) sunny days again.  McMurdo is again McMuddo, and a river runs through it.  Out at the hanger, we rolled CREST out into the sun to test its solar panel system.  It passed with flying colors, and we are now ready to see what this armed and fully operational Death Star can accomplish.  In the photo you can also see our neighbors (STO) had their instrument outside as well, waiting for the Sun to appear around the corner of our building in order to use it as a target to help align their multiple telescopes.

Getting a Clue in the Coffee Bar

To relax, we have been playing games in the Coffee Bar, or playing music. Last night we had reserved the bandroom, and played together for about three hours.  I've heard better, and I've heard worse.

Turkey Trot 5K

Well, I survived the Turkey Trot 5K.  It was touch and go. The first half was all an uphill slog of various grades (mostly pretty darn steep) and the last half was all downhill (much better) on icy and/or rocky road. The uphill portions were brutal.  It took me just over 30 minutes to go 5K, and I wasn't the last one in. Not my best time by a long shot. I beat some of those young whippersnapper types, at least.

The race was a great show opportunity for some people. Three self-styled MC's of the event dressed as turkeys and started the race. Some participants dressed up as well. I saw a few penguins, a few cross-dressers, and a cow.

The starting line

After the race I napped for more than an hour. I missed brunch (ended at noon; lunch is usually until one; I had no idea it was a brunch day), so by the time our scheduled seating for the special Thanksgiving meal came along I was quite hungry.  The dinner was very good. The tables were nicely set with tablecloths, most people dressed up, and some brought wine.

Along the course

We continue to work towards declaring "flight ready" the first few days of December. That means this week!  We tested both solar panels today and found they provided more than enough power to keep our instrument running as long as the sun shines.  I hunted down light leaks in our veto paddles.  They are only manifested when the instrument is in bright sunlight, which it will be when at the top of the atmosphere.  Meanwhile, I have identified a problem in the timing calibration system most likely due to a broken fiber. The problem effects half the veto system, so it is imperative to do what we can to find and fix it.  It is likely a broken optical fiber that is still in its casing, so some light is transmitted but not enough to do the calibration properly.

Near the finish line. See how much happier I am?

No time for much fun. I bought powerful medicine at the store and am dosing myself and feel much better.  We have managed to have group game nights the last two evenings. We played Clue. I won at Trivial Pursuits!  But I lost big time in Scrabble Deluxe.

Snowy, busy days

Hello from the Bottom of the World!  I haven't posted for a few days now because I've been really busy working lately.  Nothing personal, I assure you.

There is a fresh layer of about three inches of snow since Sunday.  Really, it's hard to tell exactly how much there is since the wind (which has been gusty around 15-30 knots) blows it around so much.  In fact, as I write snow is whipping around LDB.  We all leave deep footprints now everywhere we go.  It's supposed to be worse tomorrow (Thanksgiving for us) but getting better into the weekend, which is nice, because we'll celebrate Thanksgiving this Saturday with the 5K Turkey Trot and feasting -- and a day off!

Calibration fun. I made 32 of these today...

The snow and wind has put the kibosh on skiing and hiking at a time when everyone is prepping for the 5K. As a result the gym has been packed.  I signed up for the Turkey Trot and now must prepare....

So what are we doing all day at work this week with the instrument?  There has been routine calibration work with excitement mixed in. It seems every morning when we arrive the instrument is in some sort of crisis mode.  Two days ago we found that the flight computer would not boot when the instrument was running on battery power instead of ground power - - bad, since we will not be running an extension cord to the instrument during the flight! And then this morning the data disks were full and the root disk was filled up as well, which, as those geeks among you out there know, is a bad thing. But we think of these as opportunities, and are able to change software/hardware etc to compensate so if the conditions happen again either the failure mode won't happen or an easy fix is in place that we can implement remotely.

...and 32 of these. Thar's gold in them thar plots!

Tonight I will go hear the weekly science lecture, about glaciers this time. I tend to skip the ones about fish with antifreeze for blood and can thus live in below freezing temperatures.  I've heard about them before.  But how the ice moves in Antarctica fascinates me, is being better understood each year, so I have a good chance of learning something new tonight.

Otherwise, I am afraid I am recatching The McMurdo Crud.  Apparently this is one of the worst years ever for it. Everyone is walking around coughing, sneezing, or otherwise miserable My first week here I was sick, then last week I felt better, but I can right at this moment that it is coming back. Bleh.  Of the nine of us in our group, more than half of us are suffering currently with The Crud.

Pegasus crash site visit

A Delta

For entertainment last night (Saturday night) I and a couple colleagues signed up to go on a trip to visit the site of a plane crash in 1970 out at the Pegasus runway.  It required 14 miles (one hour) of shoulder to shoulder bouncy travel in a Delta to get there. We spent about an hour exploring the wreck -- or rather, what was still visible above the snow -- climbing all over it in the process.  Lots of pictures and goofing off later, we all got back in the Delta and returned to McMurdo.

The Pegasus crash site. The tail fin is visible.

You will be happy to know that no one was hurt in the crash. In those old days, a flight from Christchurch took 10 hours, and the weather had taken a turn for the worse by the time that plane arrived. They were short on fuel, couldn't see the runway, and had strong, gusty winds.  The pilot took a last pass, had everyone buckle their seatbelt, and hoped for the best. Fortunately, he missed the few structures near the runway, and glided to a halt, although he dipped a wing during the glide, which sheared off, spinning the plane around.  The most dangerous part was then the three hour wait in frigid temperatures before getting rescued. The rescuers couldn't find the plane, the weather was so bad, and the subzero temps were starting to take their toll on the crash victims.  Fortunately, there was story book ending, with a complete rescue.

Planking the plane. Yes, that's me.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil

Today, when a plane gets to the halfway point between Christchurch and McMurdo, a critical look is taken at the McMurdo weather, and if it looks like it is worsening, the plane will "boomerang" -- go back to Christchurch.  This is much to the dismay of the passengers, who spend as much time on the plane as it takes to get to McMurdo in the aborted attempt only to have to do it again the next day.

Shifting gears

Hello everyone! We have reached a milestone with the detector - again.  All detectors are on, functional, and streaming data. We are done with repairs!!  I am especially pleased that we were able to locate a few troublesome light leaks on the veto system (my detector), and one of the veto detectors that seemed not to work came alive after plugging in the cable. That helps tremendously....

So now I can shift gears from gluing, cabling, fixing, and worrying to examining the ground data as we take it, and learning care and feeding of the instrument in flight mode.  I am looking forward to exploring something that looks like science instead of nuts and bolts.  It's all fun.

Random art shot

Meanwhile, I have resolved to take a hike or exercise each evening. Two nights ago (as you know if you read my blog regularly) I hiked up Ob Hill. Last night I hiked the Hut Point loop, which goes by one of Sir Robert Falcon Scott's huts he set up for his ill-fated expedition of about a century ago as he sought to be first to the Pole. You history buffs know he lost spectacularly, dying in the process only about 30 miles from here, on the Ross Ice shelf (same ice I am on right now at LDB!), along with his men.  Some may say he deserved it - he brought PONIES for a slog to the Pole, through ice and snow!  There feet poked right through the snow, and they were not cut out for the extreme cold temperatures. Amundsen skied, brought dogs to haul his gear, and made it to the Pole and back, eating the dogs as he went. Brilliant! 

Tonight I'll go to the gym. I am making up for all the desserts I have been eating, and I have to get in shape for next week's Turkey Trot 5K. Sounds easy, right?  Well, there's a 500 foot peak we go over (twice!) on that little trot. Plus, the temps may be in the teens with subzero wind chills.  We do serious exercising in Antarctica!

Leave 'em right here

In other news, I have sorted my trash again. Recycling is big here.  McMurdo's only export is trash.  Every spring a cargo vessel drops off goodies for the next year and loads up with trash from the past year.  There are 10 categories of trash. Some are obvious, like glass and plastic, but seem arbitrary, like paper towels. There is a special category for items that may be reused, called "skua" after the pesky seagull-like birds that dive bomb anyone foolish enough to walk around with food out in the open. There are several bins that have very special labels, and they are my favorite.  The best are glitter, unicorn horns, dreams and urine soaked pants. 

Ob Hill

Intrepid explorer atop Ob Hill

Things are going relatively smoothly. We are prepared to start goopin' & gluin' tomorrow morning.

For a break and exercise to burn off the extra food I am eating, tonight I hiked to the top of Ob(servation) Hill. Ob Hill is one of my favorite hikes - short but sweet.  The 750 foot high hill towers over McMurdo Station and offers views of McMurdo, Scott Base, LDB, the mountains, Erebus.... in short, all around. Tonight the viewing was so clear that I could see open water in the far distance, and a couple of monster icebergs, which look like big blocky white buildings.

McMurdo from Ob Hill

Finally, the news that counts: Meals continue to be delicious. For lunch, in addition to the usual fresh fruit, salad, and cheese selection, there was mahi mahi and some sort of delicious chicken breast.  For dinner, a fabulous tomato soup, with an apple cobbler and carrot cake with coconut for dessert.

The melting begins: McMuddo

In other news, we are going through a spate of warm weather. The high temps are just above the freezing mark, and the skies are bluer than blue. The sun is intense, and the melting is starting.  McMurdo is becoming its alter ego: McMuddo.  Come mid-December, when the melting is mostly complete, it becomes all diesel and dust.  Sounds unpleasant, doesn't it?  Yes, but the food is great as compensation, at least this year.

Cape Armitage

...which I keep mispronouncing as "Cape Armageddon," is the promontory between McMurdo and Scott Base. It WAS the last trial in the McMurdo trail system I hadn't hiked. It is across sea ice, and in year's past was already closed (or should I say, melted away) by the time of my arrival.  But yesterday (Sunday) I played hookey from work, caught up on sleep, exercised a little, and hiked this three mile trail across the ice shelf.  It afforded a very nice view of McMurdo from the sea ice.  There was also a really nice photo op with a bunch of flags marking a fuel line. 

McMurdo from the sea ice off Cape Armitage

Today (Monday) I am back at work. We finished applying the reflective tape (except for minor spots) on the instrument frame and lowered to the floor. I am now starting to look at the data to make the last checks of the veto system, which I am responsible for. 
And now it's Tuesday. Nothing is ever easy. I got totally stuck in the first step of looking at the data, and it took until today to track down the error.  And now I am waylaid into another panel project, gluing aluminized mylar to the foam thermal insulation that surrounds the upper part of the detector.

I have been under the weather lately, recovering from a mild cold that has settled in my chest. I go around with a hacking wet cough, which makes everybody move away from me quickly. Colds spread quickly here.  But I have this friendly penguin to help me get better.

This is the life!

You know, I would like to say that being at McMurdo is a hardship. I would like to say that we sleep in Quonset huts, cook our own meals by boiling seal blubber after hunting the seals ourselves. That scurvy is just around the corner, and that I'll lose 30 pounds but gain a hardening of the soul unavailable in normal life.

But here's reality: for lunch, we have been having fresh kiwi, raspberries, and cantaloupe.  Today we had borscht soup, Swedish meatballs, vegetable tofu. For dinner, there was a special celebration of 30 days in a row with no injuries, and we had king crab legs, spaghetti, pork loin, and chicken breast. We have fresh salad, several dessert choices, and fresh breads every night. This is not a hardship. Should I complain that the bus trip to work is 45 minutes?  Should I complain that I have a roommate? That the shade on my window is not dark enough? That there is not enough bandwidth to watch Hulu? Puh-lease! This place gets nicer every time I visit. It's like going to a spa.

So I feel guilty that life is good here.  I feel like I should be telling you all this in a confessional booth and getting absolution for living so well in such a far away place.  I am surrounded by memorials for people who died here as they crossed the ice. Heck, Williams Field, one of the air strips on the Ice, is named for a Navy sailor who drowned when his tractor fell through the ice.  His body is still at the bottom of the bay.  And here I am, waltzing around in my slippers.

Tonight was very pleasant. I went to a mini-concert by one of the dining assistants (who visited our experiment last week) in the coffee bar.  I really felt a sense of community there. It was easy to strike up a conversation with the geologist sharing my table. Everyone was really enthusiastic and supportive about the fiddling.  Folks insisted that he pass around a hat for donations.

Colin fiddling in the coffee house.

Well, off to the ATM to get money to spend in one of the four bars (including the one at Scott Base) the gift shops (one here, one at Scott Base), and then to relax in the sauna (well, not really, but there is one here), then catch a movie in one of the lounges.  My roommate suggests we should get the t-shirt:  "Life is good: McMurdo."

Ta ta!

Forward progress

It's Saturday morning here.  Time for a new post. Thanks to everyone who has sent comments. It helps motivate me to write more. 

It is back to feeling like Antarctica here.  Temperatures are in the single digits (F) with wind chills in the negative teens. I don't mind the cold but the wind is wicked.  The breeze gets into every available chink in my usually-warm armor.

I have been really busy the last couple days making "forward progress" (our PIs favorite way of describing the focus of the day's activities) on the panels discussed in earlier posts. I have made my peace with them, even though we had to redrill new holes for nearly every screw.  It is just a matter of adjusting expectations.  The process was to mount the panels by placing them in the intended location and then making the best of a bad job of locating holes by drilling and tapping new ones, then applying a very shiny tape made of teflon coated silver.  This tape reflects the sunlight at float altitude, where the Sun's radiant energy is far more potent than it is at the Earth's surface after it has been filtered by the atmosphere.

Happy shiny panels

As you can see, I really put my back into my work. My job was to hold the panels up against the bottom of the instrument while Michael drilled and screwed.  The hard hats were to keep our skulls from getting ripped open if we were to scrape them up against the underside of the panels where various scraps of sheet metal were hanging down after being cut to make room for boltheads.

Today I do follow up work with the panels. Now we go and cover every screwhead with the same shiny tape.  We still have 5 side panels without tape on them. And then the instrument frame gets tapes as well.  You can see how nice and shiny the bottom is now.

Sanity check

All this effort has been keeping me so busy that I have not been keeping up this blog as faithfully as I would like.  Instead, I have been taking a little time at the end of each day to relax with my guitar.  Occasionally an impromptu jam session arises among the four guitarists out here, and it can get a little noisy in the hangar past 4:30 pm.

The CREST experiment

The CREST (Cosmic Ray Electron Synchrotron Telescope) instrument will measure the flux of electrons at very high energies, in a region that has not yet been explored.  The graph below shows the current data set and predictions for the flux of cosmic ray electrons.  Keep in mind that these electrons are stripped from their atoms in the violent places of the galaxy, such as supernova remnants (SNRs), and accelerated to near light speeds.  Electrons are special compared to atomic nuclei (what remains of the atom after you strip the electrons off it) because they are relatively light.  Imagine throwing a racquetball and a basketball towards a bunch of hanging strips of cloth. The heavier basketball will penetrate much further than the racquetball, which slows down very quickly, eventually halting. The same is true of electrons compared to nuclei. The electrons are stopped relatively quickly, and fast electrons rapidly become slow electrons.  You can see that effect in the predictions in the graph.  At right about where the data points stop (~3000 GeV in energy) there is a green dashed line that plummets towards zero.  That is a sign of electrons not penetrating very far from their source, and getting absorbed in their journey after acceleration. 

But, you may ask, what is that dashed-dot line doing there at higher energies, over 3000 GeV?  This prediction is for electrons which reach Earth from a particular SNR (Vela), which is close enough to us that electrons accelerated there to these high energies could still reach us.  The detection of electrons at these extremely high energies, which could only come from a nearby source, such as Vela, is a "smoking gun" indication of acceleration in SNRs, since the only nearby candidate sources are SNRs such as Vela.  That's science worth doing.

Note that no data points exist at these extreme energies.  The reason for that is that these energies are very difficult to measure.  The energies are greater than what we can produce on Earth in particle accelerators, such as CERN and Fermilab.  And, furthermore, if you have any familiarity with high energy physics experiments, you know the size of those instruments are huge,  like a big house.  We have to fit our instrument into space on a balloon or rocket. 

CREST principle: detect synchrotron photons from primary electron

CREST design

So how do we detect those extremely high energy electrons?  We don't go for the electron itself directly. Instead, we make use of a process called synchrotron radiation, in which the electron emits photons (particles of x-rays) as it bends in the Earth's magnetic field.  We detect the synchrotron radiation instead of the electron.  The synchrotron process is well understood, and you can take a guess at the emitting electron's energy based on the average energy of emitted x-ray photons. We identify synchrotron x-rays from the background of x-ray photons from the Sun and other sources by looking for them to come at essentially the same time and lie along a line (representing a projection of the electron's path onto the detector from above).  So CREST is an x-ray photon detector, not an electron detector, but by identifying synchrotron x-rays we can learn about the original incoming electron.

Cookie day!

I was glad to learn today that cookie Wednesday is still alive and well at McMurdo! At lunch I had a chocolate chip, molasses, oatmeal raisin currant, and mint chocolate.  Mmmm....  I always looked forward to Wednesday during my previous visit.

LDB galley

Inside the LDB galley

Challenge for my 220 class: Complete the following sentence in the style of Dr Nutter.  "Cookies are ____  _____"  (Two words).  Er, maybe it's not such a challenge after all.

In other news, I started applying expensive silver teflon tape to those horrible panels-that-used-to-have-holes-in-the-wrong-places-and-now-have-holes-of-various-shapes-in-more-or-less-the-correct-places.  That process is going much better than the hole-making/rearranging/mutilation.

Dinner in the McMurdo cafeteria

For my Cincinnati friends, you should know that I had Cincinnati style chili last night here at McMurdo. Chef tells me that there was chocolate and cinnamon in it, as there should be.  I found it BETTER than both Skyline and Goldstar.  Which isn't saying much, really, since I am not a fan of either. But I could have had seconds on the stuff last night if I wasn't too busy eating the purple velcet cake dessert.

I should rename this post "More thoughts about buildings and food. Or rather, just food."

What are cosmic rays? Why bother?

I have always thought that the name "cosmic rays" is a little unfortunate. It is somewhat reminiscent of little green men and ray guns.   But cosmic rays could not be further from alien life forms.  They are simply a stew of atomic nuclei and electrons, accelerated up to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light.  They are responsible for the majority of the background radiation we Earthlings experience.  If you have heard that airline pilots experience more radiation than groundlings, it's true - cosmic rays from space are the reason. The atmosphere absorbs them, so there are more at the top of the atmosphere than the bottom.  Some scientists study the ones that make it all the way through the atmosphere--I even used to work on an experiment that looked at particles created by cosmic rays that could penetrate all the way through a mountain!-- but my current experiment is focused on detection of the electron component above the atmosphere.

Tycho's supernova remnant

Where do they come from and how do they get here?  The space between the stars is not really empty (although it is a far better vacuum than we humans can create on Earth in the laboratory).  It has a gas of atoms floating in it.  Sometimes those atoms are ionized, meaning that just one or two electrons have been removed from the atom.  This provides a "handle" for electric fields and magnetic fields to use to move the atom around. When a violent event such as a supernova shock passes through the gas, it strips off any remaining electrons, and accelerates the bare nucleus and free electrons to very high speeds, within a wee fraction of the speed of light.

Now begins a long and arduous journey from the source, where the cosmic rays (for these nuclei and electrons are now promoted to full-fledged cosmic rays) originate, to Earth, where we can detect them.  And herein lies one of my favorite aspects of cosmic rays: I will never go to other parts of our galaxy, but I can study other parts of our galaxy as it comes to us. Astronomers look at ethereal photons with their telescopes; I look at small pieces of extrasolar matter with mine.  The galaxy comes to me!

The journey is fraught with danger.  The path they take is determined by the weak magnetic fields present throughout the galaxy, which guide the cosmic rays hither and yon in a random walk through the galaxy. During their galactic stroll, the cosmic rays can run into unaccelerated atoms (the atomic gas between the stars) and smash into pieces.  They can also slowly lose energy by scattering off those same atoms, and even the magnetic fields.  If they lose too much energy, they never make it to Earth.

Although they are invisible to the naked eye (these aren't meteorites!) we have instruments that can "see" them. Since we want to look at the them before they hit the atmosphere, we need to get our instrument up above the atmosphere. Ideally that means a space vehicle like a satellite, but a satellite-based payload requires over a decade of planning and waiting in the queue for a slot. A great alternative is an extremely large high altitude helium-filled balloon. These can go into "near space" (99.5% of the way there) for a lot less expense, and with a much shorter queue. NASA's Long Duration Ballooning (LDB) program provides these technological marvels, and you can basically get a slot any time. Plus, balloons are way cool.

About McMurdo

I have been here before, so I feel a bit jaded about the whole Antarctica thing.  It is pretty cool, though.

A few wrote asking to learn more about the facilities. I wrote a post describing some background on McMurdo in my first blog. Here's the link (don't be fooled by the dark lettering that I can't seem to change the color of - there's a link there in that seemingly blank space).  In it I describe my fist impressions and some of the facilities, with pictures.  Nothing much has changed, except the food is better, and there are more hiking trails available.  You can also follow the McMurdo Station webcam link in the right hand column to see a live picture.  The blue building in the center is the dining hall.  I'm in the dorms that are light brown with dark roofs slightly to the right of the blue building in the picture.

I went to the Outdoor Recreation training after dinner tonight.  It is required to take the long hikes out to Castle Rock and the Cape Armitage loop, which goes across the sea ice.  The latter trail is the only trail I have not been on, so I am looking forward to taking it.

It was a really tough day today, and it is good to be back relaxing in the dorm room.  I am grateful for the enforced end of day because of the shuttle schedule, otherwise my colleagues would want to stay out at LDB 24/7.  They just must be built of sterner stuff.  Tonight a band of some sort is playing in one of the bars (there are three bars here), so I'll check them out and call it an early night.

Work, work, work

We've been working our tails off day in, day out, to get the instrument back up to snuff. We had to pull a channel yesterday to replace a bit of electronics. That was relatively easy compared to the task I have been assigned today: I am working on placing pre-made panels on the instrument sides. While the panels are very pretty, they are totally the wrong size. I have been creatively using a drill as a router, in addition to employing other machinist anathemas.  In the six panels mounted so far, of 32 pre-drilled holes only 12 were in the right places. 

So I have nothing to report on the playing scene. So far, every day, I have gotten up at 6AM, showered & dressed, eaten breakfast, and caught a shuttle by 7:30.  After the ~45 minute long ride to the LDB site (7 miles out, no way to ski directly there, no vans available for us to have for our small group), we work until noon, eat a very good lunch on site (awesome flourless chocolate tort today) and then work all afternoon until we catch a 5:30 shuttle back into town. The cafeteria is open only until 7:30pm, so we dump our stuff in our rooms and race to dinner, then have about three hours before we collapse, exhausted, into bed.  Then it begins again.  Some are chafing under the limited schedule. There are no other rides out or in from the LDB site during the day except the cook's shuttle back into town at 3:30 pm, but we are too busy to go into town early.

Mt Erebus behind stuff sitting around the LDB site, including the stairs to nowhere

We did do some training yesterday morning, so we stayed in town until about 9AM. Wee.  I don't even remember what the training was for.

Despite my haggard outlook, I still admire the view from from the hanger now and then and marvel at being in Antarctica. 

So my synopsis of my time here to date follows:

All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy. All work and no play makes Scott a dull boy.


I'm ready for a nice hike.

Don't be shy

I can't tell if you are reading this or not. Let me know by posting a comment!  If you don't have a google account, don't worry - post anonymously and sign your name. 

What questions do you have? What pictures do you want to see?  What stuff from the store do you want?  (They have tshirts, fleece vests, mugs, pins, posters... you name the tourist item, they probably have it).

Day 3: Starting to work, starting to play

CREST getting delivered to our hanger.

This is our third full day at McMurdo. We arrived in time for a late supper last Wednesday, so I won't count that day. On Thursday we unpacked our shipping containers and set up the lab. Yesterday we took delivery of the instrument, and removed its shipping container from around it. That meant removing lots of bolts.  Today we got the instrument talking to our ground computer, and took stock of what repairs might be needed.  We identified two veto photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) that weren't giving a signal, and several crystal PMTs that weren't working either. In addition, we verified that one STAC (group of 16 crystal PMTs sharing a piece of electronics hardware) that was not working just before shipping it down was still not working. That's our starting place for our repair work.

BTW- There is a strange issue with blog post dates. My computer is on Eastern time and that's the post time that is used. But I am 18 hours IN YOUR FUTURE! So while this blog may post as being sent in on Friday, for me it is Saturday afternoon.  If you do something wrong I will will know about it before you even think of doing it. So don't.

CREST in the hanger, awaiting our attention

My days consist of getting up at 6am, having breakfast, then catching a shuttle to the LDB site (which takes ~45 minutes).  I stay until 5:30pm, when another shuttle takes me back to McMurdo proper, where we have dinner (over at 7:30) and decide what to do with our evening. Lunch is in a special galley at the LDB site, and I must say that I am eating like a king. We had beef Wellington today, with fresh cheeses (blue, goat, smoked cheddar, among others), fruit, salad, fresh-baked bread.... Yum!

Meanwhile, in the short evenings after dinner we have just begun to explore. For now we plan to work every day (including tomorrow, Sunday, the traditional day off at McMurdo) until we have a good handle on the extent of our needed repairs.  Last night I (re)visited the coffee bar, where I watched the last bottle of red wine on the station get drunk (not by me!).

The tube to under the Ice

Inside the tube under the Ice.

There is something new this year that I have not done before. There is a metal tube with windows on the bottom that gets lowered into a hole in the ice.  You can climb down the tube (one person at a time!) and view the underwater world under the ice. There were lots of wee sea urchin larvae swimming about, and the sunlight filtering through the ice was eery. Nearby on the top of the ice there was a Weddell seal sunbathing.  These are monstrous beasties, and make me think of a giant sea slug. While we watched, it began shuffling about, eventually disappearing into a small hole in the ice.   I also gave my colleagues a small tour of the station.   I'll give you one later, so stay tuned!

Fat Weddell seal

Arrival!

I thought I would share this picture I took of myself right after getting off the plane, which you can see in the background.

I am working on a few posts to describe the science we are  exploring and how the CREST instrument works.  Until later!

Getting around town

(This post is culled from my other blog for the third and fourth grade classes at St. Joseph Elementary.)

Every day I go for a 30-45 minute ride (only ~ 7 miles) from McMurdo Station out the the Long Duration Ballooning site (LDB).  I spend so much time on various forms of transportation that I thought you might like to know about them.  Certainly getting around on snow and ice takes a special kind of machine, so there are some real interesting ways to get around town here. Some of the vehicles are from the original establishment of the base in the 50’s. They built them to last then. Here are pictures and descriptions.

Derelict Junction

All of these are picked up at Derelict Junction, a rather nondescript mudhole/bus stop by the dorms.

A Delta

The Delta’s are odd all wheel drive vehicles that are kind of like articulated buses. Passengers ride in the box and bounce around. The wheels are big to avoid getting stuck in mud and snow.  The box is very cramped. The windows are small and usually fog up so badly or are so dirty that you can not see out, and you can get seasick in there.  There are sick bags in the box for such occasions. If you're lucky you can ride in the front seat, and the view is much better. You can see ice pressure ridges, where the Ross Ice Shelf is pushing up against Ross Island. The shelf is fed by a glacier which dumps a tremendous amount of ice in it, and it has to go to sea, but our little island is in the way.

Ice pressure ridges near the Transition.

Ivan the Terrabus

Ivan the Terrabus –  I love the name.  Ivan is more comfortable but slower.  You can see out the windows.  The view is quite spectacular.

Van

Vans– these get used when the temperatures are colder and the ground is frozen.  Notice how large the tires are.

Snowmobiles– no doubt you have seen these before.

Tractor pulling a helium tank

Yours truly on snowmobile

Tractors galore– earthmovers, forklifts etc all use treads, not tires, since tires would get mired in the muck. Note the trailer in the picture also has treads. They work well on ice and raise a lot of dust in town.

4 wheeler

4 wheelers – the LDB crew could not live without theirs during my last visit. They have little sleds they haul stuff behind.

Planes and helicopters – The C130’s and LC130’s (in air) haul passengers and cargo (the L means it has skis AND wheels). The are operated by both the “Kiwi” (New Zealand) Air Force and the New York wing of the US Air National Guard. I came in on a C17 this time, and a C130 the first time. The C17 Globemasters are operated by the US.  There are also planes called Twin Otters (on ice in photo below), which go to field camps deep in Antarctica because they can take off and stop on a dime, and helicopters, for nearby drops.  They are piloted by Canadians.

C130 in the air; Twin Otter on the ground in front of a tractor.

Icebreakers and research vessels: I toured both the research vessel (Nathaniel B Palmer) and the icebreaker (Swedish icebreaker Oden) in January 2008.  These are both highly specialized big boats. You should be able to find a lot of information about them on the web.

Icebreaker Oden

Nathaniel B Palmer