Balanced and level
It was windy and cold today. Well, it's always cold, but the wind made if feel really cold. It's also much more of struggle to make the walk out to the AASTO and the wind finds every little spot of skin that isn't covered. Despite the conditions, Fred & Colin spent most of the morning up on the tower sizing, measuring, and installing the big lead-brick counter weight that keeps the telescopes balanced on the Gmount. We put the weight on last year and were surprised, and a bit perplexed, when the brick needed to be moved several inches to keep the telescopes balanced. As far as I know, nothing has changed on the telescopes from this year to last...?

After finishing the balancing, Jessie & Colin made one more check on their leveling of the mount from the night before, requiring more tower time for both of them. If the wind isn't bad enough on the surface, up on the tower it's much worse. It's not that high, just enough to put you above all the little obstacles that slow the wind at ground level, treating you to its full-force. Colin got the award for most frosty today.

I spent most of the time in the AASTO struggling with software. It's was grueling. The others kept opening the door and the temperature would drop to 16C (60F)! I almost had to put my jacket on. I wasn't having much luck fixing the software, either. Fortunately, each night our little building is visited by a software elf who comes from somewhere in Chile to make improvements and fix things we've broken. We'd be lost with out this help. Thanks Michael!

We were happy to see Dana arrive during lunch. He's down here for his second winter in a row. It's a big relief to know he'll be supporting our project again this year. After all of last year's troubles, we'd really need to get him lots of good data.

Last night there was an unexpected party in the hall outside my room. It was impossible to get by without being forced to take a beer or margarita. I was good though and didn't stay around as I wanted to go up and see the "open mike night" where Jessica Dempsey -who moved the AASTO for us last year- was singing. She's got a phenomenal voice and it was a real treat to hear her. There was also a very good original poetry reading by one of the heavy equipment mechanics. It's very neat to see the amazing and unexpected talents of the people working down here.

Finally, after much delay, I've got the first set of pictures from our 2005 deployment on the project web site: www.polartransits.org. I hope you enjoy.

cheers,
Doug
posted by Doug Caldwell at 11:27 PM

The excitement never stops...
Another action packed day at the South Pole! We started the day in a bit of a panic trying to get some replacement computer disks down here before we leave and the station closes. Three disks have failed since we arrived, two in the past two days. We have two spares, but really want a few more. Some late night emails yesterday set Kevin to work. Thanks to him and rapid work from Lauren at the SETI Institute, by the time breakfast was done here, we'd purchased two replacements in Christchurch. The next problem was getting them down here in time. Email can only come in and out when the communication satellites are available: about 10pm to 9am local time, making it difficult to coordinate a pickup. Fortunately there is an iridium satellite phone available that works all the time. After several calls to the US and NZ, we learned that the disks would be ready too late for Dana to bring with him -- he leaves early tomorrow morning for Antarctica. However, with some more help from Cargo Paddy, we arranged to have the disks delivered to the Antarctic Centre in Christchurch where they will enter the river of cargo on it's way down. Hopefully, we will manage to scoop them out in time.

The next bit of excitement was seeing the Gmount move under it's own power for the first time in several months. Jessie and Colin are working on leveling the mount on it's platform. It's a time consuming task requiring very small changes on some very large bolts. It doesn't help that moving around on top of the tower throws off the level a large amount. However, they worked out a great system by tying a digital camera to the mount to take pictures of the precision bubble level as the mount turned around. Then, back to the computer lab, where they were able to work out the change in level from postion to position by comparing the images, telling them just how much they have to move the leveling bolts. They expect it to be perfect with one more iteration. They're even talking about compensating for the fact that our tower isn't exactly at the South Pole. It's about one half kilometer away, which puts the gravity determined level about 15 arc seconds off of alignment with the Pole. They say that's a piece of cake. Unfortunately, climbing up and down the ladder probably knocks is off level by at least that much.

The action didn't stop at lunch time, where one of the scientists found a small fly in her fresh salad, just in from Christchurch. Rather than complaining, she was overjoyed about having a new pet. She was showing it to everyone at the table and trying to teach it some tricks when, tragically, it succumbed to the combined effects of altitude and salad dressing. A brief memorial service followed.

cheers,
Doug
posted by Doug Caldwell at 1:06 AM

What a view!
We made lots of progress today. By the end of the day the hardware, at least, was back in the state it was last year before we left for the winter. We put our outdoors computer and camera controller back up on the tower, took down the tent, and turned on power to everything. We even managed another dark picture of the inside of the camera shutter!

The computer and camera controller both made the same trip up the tower on a rope that the camera had made yesterday. Again, no mishaps. Jessie and I positioned everything in the custom made (a K. Martin special edition) box and plugged in the many cables. Colin shortened some power cables for us so the box wouldn't be such a rat's nest of wires once everything was inside. We made some other improvements that will hopefully make our external equipment shelter more serviceable and reliable, so that Dana won't have to spend much time huddle over it trying to read a rapidly freezing lcd monitor.

Once the EES was operating, were ready to remove the tent. The heavy canvas came off easily and gravity helped us get it off the tower. The aluminum frame proved a little more difficult. We had to try every wrench in the AASTO before we found the right one. The three legs of the frame are about 8 ft long, so we thought it best that we lower them with rope, rather than just giving them a shove. By early afternoon, the tower was clear for the first time since October. We all took a little time to enjoy the grand view. It's not that high, but it gives a little perspective to just how small this station is compared to the surroundings.

There is a special Chinese delegation visiting today to get ideas for a base they are planning to build at Dome A, the highest point on the Antarctic plateau. I think the National Science Foundation was trying to impress, as there were new speakers and headphones on all the machines in computer lab, all the snowmobiles were parked in a nice straight line next to the station, and the cargo area seemed even more orderly than usual. The delegation was touring a nearby building just as we peeled the canvas tent off of our little tower. Hopefully, they were impressed, though I noticed their escort didn't bring them our way. I'm sure it would be a little intimidating for someone planning a base to come here. The new station is large and very modern; the whole area is very active and incredibly well organized. We are up to six flights a day bringing in cargo, people, fuel, and taking out people, equipment, and trash. In the next few days they are planning to increase that to 8 to 10 flights per day.
posted by Doug Caldwell at 1:40 AM

Installing the camera
We prepared everything last night for for an early morning installation of the camera into the telescope up on the tower. After a delicious breakfast of french toast (or is that still freedom toast?) and lots of bacon (for warmth), Fred and I headed out on our 1/2 km walk to the AASTO. We turned on a small space-heater in the tent on the tower to try to warm the area up enough so that we wouldn't damage the camera by letting it get too cold. When it's installed in the telescope, the camera is heated to around -10C, so it never gets down to the outside temperature. After a half hour, we realized that even a 1500W space heater wasn't going to do much good against the entire Antarctic plateau, so we decided to proceed. The first step was to hoist the camera up the tower in an insulated box. It's too big and awkward to carry up the ladder. We just had to hope that the foam and cardboard box wouldn't break on the way up and we'd have to watch our $50,000 camera fall to the ground along with any hope for our experiment. Fortunately, the box held. The temperature was about -25C in the tent, approximately 5 degrees warmer than outside, but more importantly, out of the wind. The tower is quite small and with the tent even more cramped. The two telescopes take up much of the space, so Fred and I spent most of the time on our knees. Everything went well, and by lunch time we had the camera in place, but with some question about it's exact position. There is only a limited range on our focus motor, so the camera has to be installed close to the best focus position. Unfortunately, we didn't have any good photographs of the final assembled position from last year. We had a caucus at lunch and Fred came up with an educated guess about where it should sit. We had an extra long lunch break to wait out a scheduled power outage for our part of the station. After our rest, we went back out, seated the camera in place, and wired it up. By about 9pm we had camera installed and ready to go.

Down on the ground, Colin and Jessie were working away at our software. Unfortunately, after the power outage one of our disk drives never came back to life. With another that was dead when we arrived at the South Pole, we're now down to two of four. Fortunately, we have some back-up on a computer provided by UNSW. We're also trying to order more spares to be hand carried down before the station closes...in two weeks!

cheers,
Doug
posted by Doug Caldwell at 11:00 PM

Busy and beautiful Monday
We had a crackin' good day today, making good progress on all fronts. It was a beautiful morning. Fred and Colin were both outside working away without jackets in the bright sun and lack of wind. Colin managed to finish his trench, just in time to learn that we aren't going to get any PVC pipe to put the cables through. They will be quite safe 1m under the snow, though. At least we're spared the joys of pulling cable, at which we spent so many fun-filled days last year. He also set up a space heater on the tower and covered the floor with blankets to make a nice cozy (-25C) workspace for installing the camera. After that, he fixed the dicey wiring on the two webcams located on the tower. He never stops!

Fred re-assembled the camera carriage, then finished with a mounting bracket needed for some modifications to the heater circuitry. Though, we still haven't decided whether or not to make the changes. We have to decide between the chance of freezing the computer, or burning it up, if something goes wrong in the external equipment shelter.

After more software work in the morning, and some timely instructions from Jason in California, Jessie and I managed to get the camera to take pictures with the completely upgraded software. We also got lots of other necessary software installed and working on the upgraded computers, ...not as fun as working out in the snow on a day like this.

By lunch time some ice clouds had blown (very slowly) in and there was a beautiful ring around the sun, complete with two sun-dogs -bright spots on the sides of the halo-, a bright pillar from the sun to the ground, and an inverted arc at the top of the halo. We even got a little bit of snow, or at least some frozen stuff drifting down out of the sky. Jessie, who grew up in warm Queensland Australia, was very excited to see snow falling.

We plan to install the camera back into the telescope tomorrow morning, then put our computer back in the equipment shelter up on the tower. If all goes well, we'll take the tent off of the tower on Wednesday and you'll be able to see the telescope on the webcam for the first time since September!

cheers,
Doug
posted by Doug Caldwell at 11:05 PM

Slow news day
It's Sunday here at the South Pole, and combined with the after affects of the party, not a lot has happened. Sunday is the rest day for most people here: the kitchen staff gets a bit of a break with only two meals and volunteers to help out as much as possible. I learned that you shouldn't operate the industrial strength disposal without the covers over the drain; if you want to stay clean, that is. After dinner, we all went to the science talk about the Ice Cube project, complete with pictures of their really deep hole.

We did manage to get a bit of work done out at the AASTO. Fred put the camera in it's carriage so it'll be ready to install in the telescope. Jessie, Colin, and I have still been doing battle with the vagueries of Linux installation and configuration. We're slowly getting there. If Michael Ashley were here, these software problems would have been cleaned up in no time. I'd try to fly him in, but I'm pretty sure the NSF wouldn't go for the idea. Colin has also been busy digging his trench. I had mentioned that it'd be nice to bury the cables to the Australian's web cam on a stick and he's taken up the challenge. He is working on a 1m deep square-sided trench 30m long. I had been thinking of just laying the cables on the ground and kicking some snow over them.

The weather has been unseasonably warm the last few days. It got up to -25C on Saturday! It's been cloudy, which usually means warmer temperatures. The clouds also came with wind though, which makes it feel worse as it manages to find all the little spots of skin that aren't covered up. It's quite clear now though, and the temperature is dropping to a more comfortable -32C.

cheers,
Doug
posted by Doug Caldwell at 1:46 AM