Just a heads up: although he is several days behind in his publishing, Ryan has been adding posts, photos, and videos to his blog.

The BUS is together.

As of late Tuesday night, the reflector back-up structure (BUS) is fully assembled, shimmed to its proper alignment, torqued up and ready to go. Panels start going on tomorrow. Exciting stuff...

The mostly completed BUS:

Hello, South Pole!

The boys of the Reflector Assembly Team have arrived at the South Pole, and are, well, assembling the reflector. Some first impressions of life at the bottom of the world can be found on Tom's blog here.

And don't forget the live webcast tomorrow, Saturday November 25 at 12PM Central time. Catch it at www.exploratorium.edu/poles/telescope.php.

The Reflector Assembly Team (RAT) --- i.e. Jeff, Joaquin, Ryan, and Tom, i.e. the only people who are blogging right now --- have reached the continent of Antarctica.

Read fascinating tales of safety lectures, airplane rides, and 104-year-old seals at Tom's blog here.

And don't miss the first of four South Pole webcasts hosted by the Exploratorium (San Francisco's science museum and our partners in education and outreach) this Saturday, November 25 at 12PM Central Time. The webcast can be found at the Exploratorium's Polar Science website: www.exploratorium.edu/poles/.

The trip to the South Pole is not a short thing. For me it began in Chicago about 2 days ago, on Thursday November 16, as I boarded a plane (with coworkers Tom and Jeff) headed to LA. There we met up with fellow graduate student Joaquin and took a 12-hour overnight flight to Auckland, New Zealand. In crossing the International Date Line during this flight I was completely robbed of the day Friday, November 17, 2006. Next up was a short flight to Christchurch, New Zealand, where I write this post.

Our time in Christchurch has been very nice so far. We've had a little time to walk around town and check out some cafes and restaurants (very impressive food so far), and last night we were even fortunate enough to experience the city's nightlife scene. Today Joaquin and I took a walk through the city's well known botanical garden (I'll post some photos when I have a better internet connection). The main purpose of our stay in Christchurch was taken care of this afternoon when we were assigned the 40-odd articles of extreme weather clothing which keep us warm and functional when we work outside at the South Pole.

Anyway, we have a few more hours to enjoy Christchurch before our "zero six hundred hours" appearance at the military airport tomorrow morning. Then we all pile into this noisy plane and fly to Antarctica. Should be fun.

Jeff, Tom, Ryan, and Joaquin are halfway there.

Well, more than half geographically and less than half psychologically. We have arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand and are scheduled to fly to McMurdo Station tomorrow, then on to the Pole the next day.

More details on Tom's page here.

Jeff is snapping pictures like a madman, and we'll post a bunch when he gets them downloaded.