The End

Station closing is today. It is one day earlier than we were expecting, which means we have had a last-minute scramble to finish all of our tasks at the telescope. Bad weather is approaching the station, forcing an early close for the season.

I can't believe I've been here for almost four months. I have worked harder during that time than I have just about any other time in my life. That is one thing about living in a station where people are working 24 hours a day - you can easily feel that you should be working at all hours, every waking moment. All meals are shared with collaborators, and even social times often drift into long discussions about the telescope. It is a recipe for incredible productivity, but after a few months of being so saturated in my work, I am also looking forward to taking a few days to enjoy other things in life. I will be headed home to Athens, Ohio for a few days to visit my family, reunite with my cats, and rediscover pleasures like bathtubs, fresh vegetables, and dark nights. I am looking forward to it.

Like last season, I'll be flying out on the very last plane. It will be an event. For eight months, all flights to and from the South Pole will be suspended. The fifty people staying here at the station will have an emotional moment, watching our plane take off. It has the feel of a celebration, closing the summer season and officially beginning the winter season. But at the same time the apprehension and the vague unease among the winterovers is almost palpable. In a few weeks the sun will sink low to the horizon, and then eventually the station will be plunged into total darkness and extreme cold for months. I would love to have the experience for a few days, but I don't know if I could handle it for such a long time.

For me, the most emotional thing about leaving is the last glance to the telescope. Everything in my life has revolved around that instrument while I have been here. In the last moments, it almost acquires a personality in my perception. I imagine it watching us prepare to leave, tired from a long season of modifications and upgrades, and ready to begin scanning the microwave sky.

Thanks to everyone for reading this blog through my stay here, and for all the comments and emails. This will be my last post for a while, possibly until the next time I make this long trip. Stay warm!

First Light for Season Two of SPT!

Everyone here is breathing a huge sigh of relief. Last night was the first night that our new set of detectors were cold enough to be operated. Unlike the last few test runs, for this run we had mounted the receiver up in the telescope where it normally lives, in preparation for doing real observing. As soon as the detectors were tuned, we pointed the telescope at an object in the sky called RCW38, which is a bright source of radiation at the frequencies we observe. We made a beautiful map of RCW38 and began learning about the properties of our new detector array, which looks fantastic. We still have a lot to learn before we leave, but last night was the big test, and possibly the most exciting moment of the whole season. We celebrated our success by sipping champagne out of paper cups while we looked at our very first data from the upgraded instrument. The enormous efforts that went into the upgrades this year look like they're going to pay off!

Order and Progress

A few weeks ago, I posted pictures from a walking tour of the edges of the station. Behind the station, construction materials, old scientific equipment, and curious miscellany have been collecting over the years in rows out on the ice. With construction on the main station near completion, the major building project on station this season has been a new facility to provide indoor storage for many of the materials currently stored outside.

Over the few months that I have spent here, I have had the opportunity to tour the construction site a few times, and recently I took some pictures of the building in a state of near-completion. Building at the South Pole poses significant and unusual challenges, among them the fact that any structure on this windswept plateau accumulates snow drifts sufficient to bury it in just a few years. The main station is elevated on stilts, and the entire thing can be jacked up as the snow accumulates over time. Other facilities on station have to be dug out each season by bulldozers. The Dome, which was the previous South Pole Station, is slowly being buried. Its shape was designed to provide a strong shelter capable of withstanding the steady accumulation, but not indefinitely. The facilities surrounding the dome have been housed under arch structures, which are similarly designed to provide strong shelters for the buildings underneath.

The new materials and storage facility is replacing some of the arch structures and previous facilities that surrounded the old Dome. In the picture below you can see the power plant on the left, the heavy machine shop on the right, and in the center is the arch where construction has been taking place this year. A couple of pictures of the interior of the building, and the arches behind it, are below that.






Even for me, walking around inside these worksites feels strange - just last year, there were still buildings under these arches that I visited, including the last South Pole bar. In between the new building and the storage arch that sits behind it, you can see the Dome - almost thoroughly eclipsed by the construction activities. In the last picture below, the original welcome sign to the South Pole Station rests on the ice behind segments of arch meant for the new facility. Everything built here is constantly changed, adapted, and upgraded to cope with the unchanging harshness of the environment at the South Pole.