Stephen

Retrograde!

2007-01-12T23:44:33Z

I'm on my way home! Tuesday evening, my boss tells me I can take the next plane back. Wednesday, I ask for a flight on Saturday. They tell me Saturday's flight is for military personnel only, but there's a Friday and Monday flight. I say, "How about Friday?", and they say "Okay!" So yesterday (Friday), I'm on a C-17 north! Today, I'm in Christchurch, and I leave for the airport in a few minutes.

Edited to add this picture:

Penguins!

2007-01-09T02:24:00Z

Sorry I haven't been updating much. Since my last update, the icebreaker has come in, cutting a path through the sea ice to let the supply ship come in.

This is the Swedish icebreaker Oden cutting through the ice. In the distance behind it is a US coastguard icebreaker.

Two days ago, the Oden finished cutting her way in, and tied up at the dock.

And look what came with her!

I'd just put some laundry in the dryer, and was heading upstairs. I saw a group of people clustered around the window at the end of the hall, and I looked out to see what was so interesting. I saw that the Oden had tied up, and thought that was what was interesting, until I heard someone comment "They didn't read the guide - that's altering their behaviour, right there." I looked again, and I saw lots of little black dots on the ice below hut point. Penguins! So I grabbed my parka and rushed out. There was a giant flock of them, more than a hundred Adelie penguins.

I'd told that they're curious about loud noises and will come to investigate, so it's probably the icebreaker that brought them. (And the icebreaker made holes for them to get through, of course.)

I spent a while watching a big flock of them walking back to the icebreaker's channel. There were large cracks in the ice, and so when they came to one, they all lined up and hopped over one at a time. The ones that hopped over waited until their friends had all come across, then started waddling back to the water in a long line.

When I came back along the path, I found that there was a big group of Adelies showing off for the crowd of people!

Adelies are definitely the cutest of all penguins. They're ~1.5 ft tall, with beautiful black and white feathers. When they walk, it looks almost like a human gait, except maybe with a bit of a waddle. But when they walk (or run) they usually have their flippers our for balance - they look so cute running across the ice with their flippers flapping and necks stretched out in front of them!

ANITA on the Launch Vehicle

2006-12-20T17:05:35Z

Hopefully this will work - the picture should be a link to the full-sized version. If not, I'll try something else.

I took this myself. :)

Edit: The picture is actually a link to another small picture, which is a link to the full-sized picture.

1 for 7 !!!

2006-12-15T01:36:18Z

0 for 6

2006-12-14T01:18:49Z

We've finished all the preparations, and we're ready to fly. Now we just have to wait for the weather to be good enough to launch. Since last Friday, we've been out to try to launch six times. We got out the door three times. Still on the ground. I hear that Sunday and Monday are promising, though.

Dangers

2006-12-10T01:34:05Z

There are three dangers of Antarctica.

1. Sunlight. It can be too bright to see without sunglasses, and the UV will fry unprotected skin and give you cataracts.

2. Static electricity. You can build up a large charge if you aren't careful. My chair at LDB zaps me nearly every time I stand up.

3. Dry air. Moisturizer is a must.

Cape Evans

2006-11-27T21:30:59Z

I've been busy, so I haven't gotten a chance to post about this yet. Last Wednesday, I went on a recreational trip to Cape Evans. This is where Robert Falcon Scott landed for his ill-fated trip to the South Pole. He and his men spent the winter in a hut at Cape Evans before Scott set out for the South Pole. (I say ill-fated, because while Scott made it to the pole, he didn't make it back. And disappointingly, when Scott arrived at the South Pole, he found a Norwegian flag flying there.)

We drove out over the sea ice. The sea ice is thinning, but still ~2-3 meters thick.

The flags are important - they mean "drive here, and you won't die".

Here's the hut itself:

It's gotten kind of buried by 90 years of blizzards. Scott's men spent the winter there, then waited for him to come back. I think it was more than a year they spent there.

Here's some of the bunks they slept in. The hut was very dark, due to all the snow blocking the windows, so I don't have good overall pictures of the interior.

When a ship finally came by, everyone just ran outside and jumped on, so the hut is still full of the stuff they left behind.

Note how Heinz hasn't changed their packaging in 90 years! There's lots of food tins, clothing, and equipment scattered about.

I also saw a grizzly reminder of the depravity that men are driven to in such isolation:

The vicious murderers!

The second reason to go on the trip to Cape Evans is the view. The landscape there is even prettier than what I usually see. Here's a shot looking out over the water to distant cliffs:

On a nearby hill, there's a memorial that Scott's men made for him and the others on the pole trip:

And here's me with Mt. Erebus in the background:

The landscape is very beautiful. One thing that occurred to me as I was walking around was that this must be what another planet might look like. There's almost no life in the area, and no plants to break up the soil. The ground was either wind-shaped ice, or volcanic ash and rocks. It's not something that I've ever seen before.

The third reason that people go on the Cape Evans trip (the hut and the view being the first two) is to see wildlife. I'm told that there's often seals or penguins around. My advisor went on the trip three years ago, and saw lots of seals and penguins. One of the guides in my vehicle told of a flock of Adelie penguins running across the road in front of them. Us though, we only saw one seal. On the way back, there was a giant seal, right by the side of the road. We didn't stop, though (which is why I have no pictures). I think the driver was afraid of getting stuck in the snow again - that gave us trouble on the way back. Still, I think that most of the passengers would have been happy to spend an extra 1o minutes digging ourselves out in exchange for a better view of the seal. I would have. So far, the wildlife's been sparse. No penguins yet! :( As the season goes on, though, they get closer. Right now, McMurdo is deep in the sea ice, and so there's no nearby water for the penguins to swim in.

We got back very late - that's how I got the picture of the midnight sun in the previous entry. I was very tired the next day.

Midnight Sun

2006-11-23T06:20:15Z

Taken from my window, 12:13 am:

Art Contest Pictures

2006-11-18T22:10:05Z

Our PI posted the art contest entries, so it must be okay to link to them. Here you go: http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/~gorham/ANITA/ANITA_art/ !

White

2006-11-18T06:00:23Z

It struck me today that the scenery was very white. When I arrived, the skies were clear and blue, but it's been overcast the past couple of days. Combined with blowing snow lowering visibility, and working on an ice shelf, you get flat, white ground, and uniform, slightly different white sky. Here and there, you could see a hint of fuzzy, distant rocks, and there were a few buildings behind me, but otherwise, just white. And it's not an overcast, dim white, either. This is a bright, better-have-your-sunglasses white. There's a bright spot where the Sun is, but otherwise uniform illumination.

This is a view from Williams Field, near the high bay where I work, taken yesterday morning. Imagine it so bright you have to squint.

Art Contest

2006-11-18T05:52:13Z

This past week, we've been running an art contest. It finished today, and we all gathered around and voted on the submitted art. There were several really good pieces. Here's the flyer for the contest:

Basically, we realized that our battery box would be too cold if we left it painted white. The batteries have an optimal temperature for operation, and we won't use them unless our solar panels fail. So sitting there in a white box, turned off, they'd be too cold to work when we needed them. But a black box would make them too hot. So our PI came up with the idea of an art contest. We need a part black, part white battery box, and this is a great way to do it.

I shouldn't show you the submitted pictures yet, as we don't have the artists' permission to post anything publically. I hope we'll be able to get them up on a website for people to see. And of course, once we get the paintings done on the battery box (should be in a few days, if that), I'll be able to post pictures of that.

Current Location

2006-11-14T04:08:25Z

I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=77.8618S+167.0641E&ie=UTF8&z=3&ll=-79.237185,178.242188&spn=17.15814,222.1875&om=1

This is Williams field, on the Ross ice shelf near McMurdo. Google maps doesn't seem to have McMurdo. A terrible oversight, really.

Werner Herzog

2006-11-13T08:28:58Z

When I was in Christchurch, I met a German documentary filmmaker. (He had (has) a cameraman with him as well, and I think one other.) If he introduced himself (I think he did), I forgot his name immediately after, but it turns out that his name is Werner Herzog. I don't think I'd heard of him before, but it seems that he's famous. The only work of his that I've heard of is "Grizzly Man".

I met him in the airport shuttle from the Christchurch airport to the hotel. He and his crew were on the same flight down to McMurdo as I was. They did some filming while we were trying on our ECW (extreme cold weather) gear, and they filmed on the C-17 flight down, too. I found out that he was famous when a member of my group asked, "When you landed, they announced that a VIP had arrived. Did you see him?" (Or something to that effect.) It seems he's filming a documentary on Antarctica, or the Antarctic environment, or something like that. He told me that he was going to climb up Mt. Erebus (a nearby volcano), get some footage at the crater. That's quite a trek. I should post a picture of Mt. Erebus at some point - I have a great view of it from the place where I work.

I've seen the filmmakers around a few more times. I see them in the cafeteria sometimes. Saturday night, I went to a talent show, and they were there filming. They were really intrusive, in fact. During a couple of the more dramatic acts, the cameraman went up on stage, and filmed the performers from one or two feet away with his big camera. (Once, he even went between the audience and the performers for a shot.) Werner Herzog himself was standing next to the cameraman holding a directional microphone, and occasionally motioning the fellow to get a certain shot. I found myself hoping I could see some of that footage - I was in the back, and I often couldn't hear the performances.

I mentioned our balloon to Mr. Herzog when I spoke to him in Christchurch, but he didn't seem interested at all. My advisor says he ran into the fellow here in McMurdo, and talked to him for a bit, but he didn't sound interested in the balloon then, either. Shame. The balloon launches are really impressive, and we've got a fascinating experiment. I guess it's not on topic for his documentary, though.

(In other news, we were the front page, above-the-fold story in the local weekly newspaper this Sunday! That was fun to see at Sunday brunch!)

Outward Bound, Leg 2: McMurdo

2006-11-11T03:57:01Z

We got up bright and early on the 6th to head down to the airport. After we all got dressed in our cold weather clothes, we headed over to the terminal to hand over our checked bags. Then we waited around for a short briefing before being bussed out to the plane. This was our ride:

The flight was about five hours. The plane is spacious, but very loud - they issued earplugs to everyone along with our sack lunches. We could walk around the plane, and look out the windows. We could even go up and peek in the cockpit, one at a time.

Flying over Antarctica.

When we arrived, we walked over to a bus, where we were taken to McMurdo for another briefing. Then we were given our room assignments and left to get settled.

Walking to the bus on the airfield. In the background, you can see all of McMurdo laid out before you. (Okay, before me. But now you can see it too!)