One more day
With only one day left Jason and I had a bit of a panic after I climbed up the tower to "fix" one of our temperature sensors. It's the one that controls when we can turn on the outside computer and I wanted to move it to a new location in the "external equipment shelter", our crate outside on the tower. While I was in the middle of fixing it, Jason called out the door of the AASTO to tell me that the temperature controller could no longer read the sensor. It's a delicate device and I had broken it shoving it around with my mittens. Without this sensor, we can't control the heaters in the EES and would have been unable to start and operate everything on the tower. Fortunately, after a few minutes of despair, we found the one spare that we had brought down. I installed it very carefully (without mittens) and the system works again. I've resolved not to go up on the tower any more before we leave; in fact, I'll try not to touch anything in the AASTO either.

We are booked on a straight-through flight on Monday: from the South Pole to McMurdo in an LC-130, where we get off, get on a bus, drive to the other ice airfield, and board a C-141 for the 5 hour flight to Christchurch. Michael and Mark had 132 people packed into their C-141 flight. The temperature was above 85F onboard, not quite appropriate for the "Extreme Cold Weather" gear we're required to wear (or at least start with). Michael reported that to his delight it was raining and warm in Christchurch.

cheers,
Doug
posted by Doug Caldwell at 11:44 PM

Our time on the ice is drawing to a close. Jason and I are the last of the Vulcan South team left out in the cold. Mark flew off on Wednesday, and Michael today. All of the Australian contingent (Jessica, Mark, Michael) were invaluable and we certainly wouldn't have been able to get everything going without their great work (I hope they know we're not done asking for help).

The station is starting to really close down for the winter. 32 people left today on Michael's flight and the population dipped below 200 for the first time during our visit. The last flight out is scheduled for February 15th. That gives Jason and I a six day buffer in case of really bad weather. After that, the next flight is in October.

The past few days Jason has been very busy working on the software to let us control everything remotely. He's been spending long nights in his "office" in the galley - the one table with an adjacent ethernet port. He usually has to wait a half hour or so after meals before all the diners get out of his office to let him work. He's made great progress and most of the systems are now operating under the new software and dutifully logging their status, which is vital when we won't be around to see how things are working out. Michael also made a few last minute software additions to help us handle the large amounts of data we expect to get.

Michael and I spent part of the day yesterday cleaning out the AASTO to be ready for winter. We had to throw out our cardboard shipping boxes along with the random trash we'd accumulated during our stay. Since the AASTO is about 1/2 a kilometer from the nearest garbage bin, the job required a snowmobile and sled. We lucked out this time and got a brand new model, the "Bombadier," complete with an electric starter and a top end of 130mph. Eat your heart out, Kevin! Michael took a video of the snow churning ride to the AASTO that can be seen (along with many other photos and videos) at his 2004 South Pole Diary. Of course, being an excellent driver (with lots of practice in the driveway), I never got above a snail-like 25 mph.

Because all the trash generated at the South Pole is flown back to the US, it has to be sorted. This meant that Michael and I spent a good hour separating all the plastic bits from the paper and light metal from the construction debris and flattening the cardboard and bagging the burnables. I'm not sure it was worth the 10 minute snowmobile ride.

Today, Jason and I took a break in the afternoon to ski out to the crashed LC-130. The crash occurred in the early 70's and the plane is now buried so deeply that only about two inches of the tip of the tail stick above the snow. There are two holes dug down to the plane that are kept free of snow by all the visitors. The toll for visiting is removing one bucket of snow for each person. To get to the cockpit we had to move three plywood sheets at the surface level, then climb down about 8 feet and lift out a large hatch. Then it's another 10 feet down a ladder, where all we saw was snow. After a bit of digging around and removing a few buckets of snow we found the second hatch that leads to the cockpit. We forgot to bring flashlights, but fortunately there was enough light from above to see, so we climbed in and had some lukewarm tea. After warming up two Sharpies enough to write, we added our names to the wall along side all the previous visitors. Because the plane is so far down it is at the ambient ice temperature of about -55C. Neither of us wanted to linger too long. After removing a couple more buckets of snow and maneuvering the covers back into place, we were both cold and ready to get skiing again. The trip back to the station featured a 15 knot headwind so by the time we made it back we were in perfect form for some ice-covered hero shots at the South Pole markers.

After being out in the Antarctic (summer!) cold it was quite strange to come into the station just in time for a delicious meal of beef wellington, fresh asparagus, potates and salad. The meals have really been excellent this trip. Cookie Jon and all the kitchen staff do an amazing job offering a great variety of really good food to 200+ people. The new galley with its many windows also helps improve the atmosphere at meal time over the old small windowless galley in the dome.

cheers,
Doug


posted by Doug Caldwell at 10:33 PM

Super Bowl Tuesday
Tuesday started off cloudy again, so we couldn't observe and stars. Jason and Michael spent much of the day programming, both trying to get the system to work in a reliable and sensible way. We also cleaned up the AASTO a bit and organized things up on the tower so that cables would be out of the way and the ladder made secure.

The big event on station was the arrival, by air, of the tape of the Super Bowl. Memos had gone out on Sunday warning anyone who saw the result of the game on the internet not to reveal it until after the tape was shown. The festivities started at 8pm to a moderately full house (I think a lot of people had already looked and seen the result). There were delicious appetizers including a roast pig (whose head now adorns a plaque above the entrance to the new station). Even the Aussies turned up to watch some of the game. About mid-way through the third quarter, however, Mark came in and announced that it was crystal clear outside. He and Michael and I then suited up and went out to the AASTO to try and find a star. After some initial failures and a bit of refocusing, eagle-eye Ashley managed to spot Canopus in one of our images. It was quite out of focus and barely visible above the bright sky background, but it was there! We went to Alpha Centuri to confirm, and managed to find it, too. These observations were enough for Mark to set the Gmount pointing calibration values, so we should be able to find stars without a problem come winter. We missed the end of the game, though. Does anyone know who won??

Today was very windy, by South Pole standards, with winds around 20 knots. Combined with the falling temperature that made for a wind chill of -75F. It was pretty miserable on the tower.

We got an Australian and US flag today from the station and I managed to find a few spare bamboo poles growing out of the snow, so the AASTO is now proudly flying the flags of both countries. It should soon be visible on the Australian's web cam (links to follow when available).

Mark is off tomorrow as his work with the Gmount is done. He's gotten it all working great and shown us how to operate it. Jason has demonstrated control of the mount through the Vulcan South software and we expect no problems.

cheers,
Doug
posted by Doug Caldwell at 10:49 PM

clouds...
It was a pretty slow day today. We spent most of the day waiting for the sky to clear so that we could observe a star in order to calibrate the Gmount. We thought we saw one, but before we could find it again, the sky had clouded over. It's bizzare how the sky changes from clear to cloudy to clear so quickly here.

While we were waiting, Michael made another improvement to our camera control computer, adding an internal disk heater to help it warm up more quickly if we lose power. I'm sure there would be a big market for the Ashley Signature Edition computers. With all the practice, we're getting much quicker at disassembling the equipment shelter and putting it back together again up on the tower.

cheers,
Doug
posted by Doug Caldwell at 10:09 PM

First Light!

Sunday was a much better day for the VS crew. Our luck must have started to turn last night when Jason won $70 at demented bingo. This morning we managed to get all systems operating with only three trips up the tower, including one in which Michael Ashley had to do some extreme programming, modifying the Linux boot sequence at -33C with a wind chill of -60C!! He did it and after a few minutes we were able to focus the photometer and get a first light image of the nearby Atmospheric Research Observatory. Mark Jarnyk is walking back from ARO in the foreground. Now we're just waiting for the sky to clear enough to see stars so that we can calibrate the Gmount.

I spent most of the afternoon preparing my talk for the last Summer Science Lecture. There was a good turnout. Hopefully I made some sense of what we're trying to do here.

cheers,
Doug

posted by Doug Caldwell at 12:32 AM