Kathryn's SPT Journal

The End

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:37:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 10:22:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:13:00 +0000

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.

The Clock is Ticking

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:15:00 +0000

I looked up at the weather screen today and saw that the temperature had dropped to -38 F (which is actually almost exactly equal to -38 degrees C). The windchill today is about -60F. The dropping temperatures signal that the end of the season is rapidly approaching. Soon, it will be too cold for planes to land here, and the station will be isolated for a period of 8 months. Most of the SPT team is scheduled to leave on one of the last two flights out, expected to be on February 14 or thereabouts. As the end of the summer season approaches, personel on station are changing over as the summer staff leaves and the winter staff arrives. Rumors are flying about the station closing early, and about whether enough food and fuel have been delivered to sustain the station over the long winter. I think those rumors are as much a part of this season as the daily drops in temperature.

For SPT, this is a tense few weeks. We have just installed a brand new set of detectors in the receiver. These are much more sensitive than the ones that we used last season, but every new batch of detectors made at Berkeley is different, and it takes a lot of work to understand their features. We have a very short time to get the new receiver working, characterize the detectors, put everything in the telescope back together again, and get it all to work together. In the midst of this, we have two new members of the collaboration (Keith Vanderlinde and Dana Hrubes) who will be operating the instrument over the winter. They both need to be trained, and are understandably anxious about learning enough in such a short time to handle everything that could go wrong once the rest of us leave. I am not personally involved in much of the receiver work, but the tension permeates everything that we are currently doing.

Below is a picture showing a set of detectors like those we have just installed. Each little circular element is a few millimeters across, and is an ultra-sensitive radiation detector. The full array that makes up our focal plane consists of hundreds of these.

The detectors are fabricated on wedge-shaped wafers and then carefully installed in a 'wedding cake' assembly with optical feeds above each detector and a triangular filter above each wedge. The filters ensure that the radiation that reaches the detectors is the right frequency. The process of assembling and installing the focal plane is one of the most delicate tasks on this project. It's taking place right now as I write this entry, and if everything goes well we're on our way to a beautiful, sensitive new detector array for the second season of the SPT.

Whimsy

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:41:00 +0000

For over a week, I have spent almost all of my time inside the station. A huge crowd of SPT folks has recently arrived and there is so much activity out at the telescope that it is a little bit of a zoo over there. I am taking the opportunity to quietly work on analyzing data. I set myself up at around 8pm in the science lab at the station and work on software and analysis all night. It's great to have the time to dig in to some of the data, but the long hours at my laptop in the quiet of the night sometimes feel a little dull.

Once in a while, though, some odd event puctuates the routine. I thought I'd post the picture below in honor of my mom's birthday, which is today. It has just the sort of whimsical flavor that she appreciates. This is a picture I snapped out the window at my desk, when I randomly looked out and saw someone attempting to fly a homemade kite in some of the most outrageous South Pole winds we've had recently. As well as I could tell, the kite itself was made of a gigantic piece of black scrap plastic. It was clearly very heavy, and when it crashed it cut well into the snow. But the winds were intense that day and had no trouble lifting it and piloting it in erratic patterns across the sky. I watched this anonymous person battling with it for a while until he wandered away from my view. Given that it was an unusual time of day for anyone to be doing much, I wonder if he had any idea anyone might be witnessing his experiment.

SPT TV

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:10:00 +0000

Last week, I had the opportunity to drive the telescope around a lot. We're not actively observing, but we are making many upgrades to the software that controls the telescope, and trying to debug little things that didn't work as smoothly as we liked last season. The only time of day when I could do this was between the night and day shifts, for a couple of hours when nobody else needed access. All season we have been working on insulating the telescope and doing a better job of sealing the inside of the instrument (and the lab) from the elements. This work requires keeping the telescope stationary and often "docked", meaning that it is parked above the control room so that we can get access to the cabin that normally holds the receiver. So I had to squeeze in between the day and night shifts of carpenters and SPT scientists who might need to work around the telescope.

For a few days, I went out and undocked the telescope and moved it around a bit to do some motion tests with various changes to the software. Moving the telescope involves issuing commands by computer from inside the lab. There is something truly awesome (and very intimidating) about having an instrument of this size under your control. First of all, it can be downright terrifying. The thing moves at an improbably high speed. It is massive! You can't imagine what it's like to see a thing of that size move so fast, and so smoothly, until you have witnessed it. Operating something that large is just sort of scary. Especially when (as was the case last week) some of the software changes led at first to unpredictable behavior. One of the stranger things is that if you are moving the telescope from inside the control room (which is directly under it), you can't see where the telescope is going. You can see the inside moving (the gears are awesome, and the entire roof rotates if you swing the thing around in azimuth), but it is nevertheless unnerving not being able to see where it points.

So, I was quite happy when Erik Leitch brought over a camera and a little TV monitor and installed them. It's an old camera and an old TV previously used to keep an eye on the DASI telescope. It was a great improvement during the motion tests last week, if only to keep me from getting too jumpy! But there was something inherently funny about having an old black-and-white TV monitor in the midst of our otherwise high-tech and state-of-the-art laboratory.

A Monumental Effort

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 10:50:00 +0000

Today, what I should be writing about is the formal dedication ceremony for the new station. This morning, the flag was taken down once and for all from the top of the old dome, the previous South Pole Station, and transferred to a shiny new flagpole at the front of the new station. Distinguished guests were flown in for the ceremony and tours, including congressional respresentatives and the highest members of the NSF. Of course, since I'm on night shift, all of this took place while I was asleep. I could have stayed up for part of it, but I've been exhausted and I simply crashed. And then I slept in for the first time in weeks, which also meant that I missed the big dinner and most of the party to celebrate the formal opening of the new station.

The new station has been under construction for years, and for a newcomer like myself, it already feels like it's been here forever. I went into the dome last year, but already by that time the main living quarters were dismantled and mostly it was being used to store office supplies and snack foods in big racks criss-crossing the well-packed snow floor inside. For many people here, though, that dome was once home. Sometimes for the better part of many years, for the really dedicated members of the U.S. Antarctic Program who have wintered over many times. The work to build the new, modernized station has been intense, and today's formal dedication was the culmination of a massive, monumental effort. I could tell it was very sentimental for many members of the community.

For me, the official ceremonies do not have the personal significance that they do to people who have been involved in the South Pole Station for five years, a decade, or even two. But I am not without a good deal of awe for their accomplishments. Ironically, what made me most aware of the sheer scale of the project to keep a station going year-round at the South Pole, and most aware of the history and the people who have kept it going, was a recent tour of the grittier sides of station activites. Last week I went for a wander behind the station, looking in on all of the trade shops (carpenters, plumbers, electricians), the storage berms, and the out-of-the-way spots where old construction materials and decommissioned scientific equipment are stored, awaiting shipment back to the states.

New storage facilities are being built, as part of modernizing the station. But for years, elevated stretches of packed snow behind the station have been used to store construction materials, frozen food, and scraps of anything that might bear reuse in the future. This part of the station can feel like an endless sea of cardboard boxes, stacked pallets, and scrap metal.

Old scientific and communications materials are stored here, as well as anything else that breaks or becomes obsolete. It is all gradually on its way out, on return flights back to the U.S. But while it waits, exposed to the bare Antarctic elements, it conveys to the wandering observer a real sense of the history of this place and the unique mixture of basic life support services with technology and cutting-edge science that has always characterized daily life here.

Below are a few more pictures from my tour. A couple of these are of an old radome, an enclosure built to protect communications antennas. There are also stacks of giant empty spools, segments of arches used for storage facilities, and aisles of construction materials. All evidence of the massive, monumental scale of maintaining a research station here in all of its forms over the years.

Our New Sunroof

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 14:37:00 +0000

It's been a busy couple of weeks out at the telescope. SPT post-doc Brad Benson and graduate students Martin Lueker and Joaquin Vieira installed a new set of detectors into the SPT "receiver", which is essentially the camera for the telescope. A full array of detectors for our receiver consists of 1000 individual pixels. Each pixel is an exquisitely sensitive device that registers tiny temperature changes when it absorbs electromagnetic radiation like that from the early universe. We record electrical signals that tell us essentially how much heat each detector has absorbed as we scan the telescope to point at different locations in the sky. For now, however, what we are interested in doing is testing the new detectors without installing them in the telescope itself, and just seeing how they work. These detectors are a major research project in themselves, and each batch incorporates new features as we learn more and more about their performance.

Because these new detectors are so sensitive, the radiation from any warm object in their field of view can overwhelm them - essentially they overheat. For the tests that we wanted to perform, we installed the receiver on the optics cryostat,which holds the 1-meter secondary mirror for the telescope, and usually lives up in the big boom below the dish. We needed a way to point the window in the optics cryostat out at the sky without mounting it back up into the telescope. So, what we've been doing is opening up the sliding roof above the control room and using a big metal plate to bounce light from the sky into the optics cryostat, and eventually to the detectors. The sky is the coldest thing around, and it's also what the detectors are designed to see.

However, this has made for interesting working conditions in the lab. It's nice to get the natural light in there, but with the ceiling open to the South Pole environment, it's been freezing! For the last week I've been working in the control room at my laptop, controlling some of the tests and looking at data. I always have enough clothes on that I don't feel cold, but I really notice how much harder it is to type. The fingers just don't want to move quickly. At times, the wind was even blowing snow through the roof, and it was bizarre to have a bluster of ice flakes swirling around in the room.

Below is a picture of our sun roof. The big white vessel is the cryostat that holds our secondary mirror at a low enough temperature (around ten degrees above absolute zero) that its own radiation doesn't swamp our detectors. In this picture you can't see the red receiver cryostat bolted to it on the other side - that's what holds the detectors. The large silver box is the FTS, which I've described before. The big metal plate is what's making sure that our detectors are mostly looking at the sky.

We just finished two days of taking FTS measurements to characterize the response of the updated receiver to light of different frequencies. In the picture below you can see what it looked like from the other side of the setup. The lenses and windows in the center of the picture are part of the setup used to direct just a little bit of light from the FTS instrument into the receiver, so that it's not too much for the detectors to take. Mostly, the detectors are looking straight up into that sunny blue sky. We are working right under the telescope itself, and you can see the bottom of the telescope boom in the background. In this position, the telescope is on it's back, with the dish staring straight up as well.

It's been a busy couple of weeks but a successful one, and we're about ready to close up the sun roof and move on to the next projects for the season. It's never dull around here!

A strange thing to wake up to

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 14:12:00 +0000

A few days ago, I wandered into the galley for my morning (evening) coffee and saw two full C-130 flight crews sitting around looking a little dazed. This is very unusual - usually planes fly here from McMurdo, spend as little time as possible down on the ice while people and cargo are exchanged, and fly back immediately. Indeed, when I poked my head out the door by my room, there were two planes sitting out there with their engines off. It was almost surreal!

It is so cold here that it's very difficult to start the engines of these planes once they're turned off. For much of the year, it is too cold to even land them here. Weather back in McMurdo and along the coast must have been really extreme to force both planes to stay here. The crews for both flights stayed the night, and I felt sorry for them - the first night at this high altitude doesn't usually leave you very well rested. All night, operations crews gathered anything around that could generate heat to warm the engines for the next morning. As I was drifting off to sleep after my shift, I finally heard them go.

Like No Other

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 15:56:00 +0000

My new favorite thing in the whole universe is the Christmas tree at the South Pole. The second I saw it I fell in love with it:

As it's been explained to me, the tree started a few years back when the night shift iron workers built it out of scraps and discarded metal parts. Each year since, members of the iron crew have added their own ornaments and adornments, resulting in a monstrous sculptural creation with more personality and character than any other Christmas tree I have ever seen. The ornaments are made from nuts and bolts, broken tools, saw blades, gears, and any sort of scrap that can be dug out of the recycling bins in the shops around the station. Limbs of the tree fall off and it requires repairs and adjustements every season.

Working on night shift often means missing most of the main social events of the holiday season. But one perk was that tonight I was able to go outside and watch this year's contributions to the ironworker tree. Below is a picture of iron crew member Kate Allen and boss Erik Nichols, while Kate was cutting her ornament. Below that is a picture of the piece after it had fallen and begun to melt itself into the ice.

Erik's ornament was an enormous snowflake made of nuts. The picture below that is a shot of Josh Miller attaching his own contributions.

I've been working so much and I'm so far away from the regular holiday traditions back home that I've barely been aware of the season. But watching the night shift iron crew decorating their spectacular and bizarre holiday tree put me in the Christmas spirit. I love the creativity here and I feel so fortunate to be able to experience a little of it. Happy holidays to everyone back home!

What Passes for Weather

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 15:36:00 +0000

We're guaranteed to have a white Christmas (of sorts) here at the South Pole. But it won't snow. It is normally too cold here for any form of precipitation. The snow on the ground here is different from the December snows back home. It squeaks when you step in it, and the particles in the air are not snowflakes but tiny, diamond-like fragments of solid ice swept up by the wind. We do get days when the wind whips enough ice into the air that you can see no more than ten feet in front of you. On these "white out" days, the array of flags peppering the landscape begins to make a lot of practical sense, marking the paths back to the station. The wind causes massive snow drifts, and after a large wind storm, the flags above the snow may be the only way to know where the carefully groomed roads once were.

Every few minutes, television screens in the galley display the current weather. This consists of the temperature, the wind chill, the wind speed and direction, and the physiological altitude (mainly a function of the air pressure). Wind determines the "weather" here. Lately, it has been warm and the winds have been mild, but irregular. Last night while I was working, it seemed that every time I looked out the window the landscape had completely changed character. One moment it was blue and sunny, the next it was grey and the sky was threatening to consume the horizon and merge with the ice below. In the space of an hour the view through the science lab window changed colors and moods several times.

Earlier in this blog I posted a picture of some sand-dusted footprints that remained in sculptural relief after a wind-storm at McMurdo. The same thing happens here at pole when the winds have been very high. With each boot-step, the snow is compressed. The wind eats away the loose powder around and (sometimes even under) the footprints before they begin to crumble away themselves. A while ago I took the photograph below after a day of high winds and cold temperatures. You can see the tracks from someone making the trip out to the telescope. Enough ice was in the air that day to create a sun-dog, a glowing ring around the sun that is one of the real treats of being here.

Often there is no perceptible change in the weather for days on end, but everyone still keeps an eye on the screens in the galley that show up-to-the-minute stats. If it's not just out of habit, it is often because the weather page is accompanied by personal photographs submitted by polies. Each weather page shows a new photograph. These are frequently funny pictures from recent parties, or beautiful shots of sundogs. But one very thoughtful person recently submitted a picture that he had of one of my cats, knowing how much I have been missing them. It appeared on the screens during midrats (night shift's lunch) today, and it made my day.

Things I miss

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:19:00 +0000

Life is actually pretty comfortable in the South Pole Station - good food, decent wine, and friendly conversation are easy to come by. Comfortable as it is, there are some things I still find myself craving. Good olive oil, hot baths, the sound of the Green Line train going by my apartment in the night. I really miss my cats, more than just about anything else from my ordinary life. They're staying with my parents and having a fine time watching squirrels out the windows, but I hope they don't forget me too much while I'm gone.

Another thing I really miss is my pottery classes. Since last spring, I've been taking wheel throwing classes at Terra Incognito Studio in Oak Park. It's a great place to spend time on weekends and evenings, socializing and working on pottery projects. I'm finding that there's a huge hole in my day to day life without that, and I will be itching to get my hands back into the clay when I get back in February.

When I was packing to come down here, one of the few personal items I brought with me was a coffee cup made by my pottery teacher Conner McKissack. There is something really comforting about a handmade object of any kind in this place. I also figured he'd get a kick out of knowing one of his cups made it all the way to the bottom of the earth. This fall our class was quite intrigued by my upcoming trip, and they even made me pull out my laptop in the studio to give a slideshow from last time I was down here. So, for Conner and the rest of the Terra Incognito crowd, I photographed the coffee mug in a place of honor - on top of the marker for the Geographic South Pole. Cheers to everyone back in the studio!

My Wild Ride

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:02:00 +0000

For the last month, one of the major projects on the telescope has been measuring the surface of the 10-meter reflector and adjusting it carefully to create a very accurate surface. This entire project has largely been the job of Chicago postdoc Jeff McMahon, who finally left to go home for the holidays after a long and intense effort to perfect our telescope dish. While my work has not overlapped much with what Jeff has been up to, once in a while I am useful for odd tasks. About a week ago, Jeff realized that he needed a series of big black stickers removed from the surface of the telescope reflector. These were placed there as "targets" for special photographic measurements last season, that helped us to create an accurate surface for the first observations. They weren't a big problem for our regular observations, so we just left them there rather than risk someone walking around on the dish to remove them.

The surface of the reflector itself is made up of many individual aluminum panels that are set by hand (basically by adjusting about a thousand individual screws) so that the total surface has a shape that is perfect to within the thickness of a human hair. It is really an impressive thing! It does not necessarily look as perfect and beautiful to the human eye as it does to the microwaves it is designed to reflect, so you have to use your imagination a little when you look at the pictures. The reflector has lots of marks from stickers and tape that we have used for various iterations on measuring and adjusting the surface. Jeff's measurements had reached a level of accuracy such that the largest of these stickers simply had to go. As the lightest member of the team, it made some sense for me to perform this slightly unnerving operation of crawling around the dish to peel them all off.

The task was actually a lot more difficult than I expected. I tried to dress somewhat lightly so that I wouldn't be bogged down and could move around carefully and comfortably. But consequently, I was freezing cold. We got me up into the dish with the telescope resting on its back (I won't describe how but again, use your imagination). I had to crawl around on two foam pads, carefully distributing my weight across as many panels as possible each time I moved. Inside, the surface of the mirror is actually quite steep and any kind of motion required a lot of care to avoid sliding, falling, or dropping gloves or tools into the center. As I moved around the dish I had to pry off each sticker and remove all of the adhesives and tape used to fix it in place. There was no way to do this effectively with gloves or my glasses, which fogged up uselessly, so it was surprisingly difficult for such a simple task. The whole operation took a couple of hours and I was really feeling the cold by the end of that. But, it was definitely a unique experience I will never forget - how many people get to climb around inside a gigantic telescope, at the South Pole no less? I was also relieved to find out later that my telescope traverse did not alter the overall shape of the dish to within the accuracy of Jeff's measurements. Phew!

Jeff took some pictures while he was standing outside, making sure that everything was going OK. That's me waving. All that plywood you can see on the telescope boom was also part of Jeff's project to measure the dish more accurately, and now that his instruments are all packed up we will put the normal roof back on.

Dirt and decay

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:48:00 +0000

The South Pole is one of the cleanest places I have ever been. Outside, the environment is absolutely pristine and essentially unchanging. There is no soil, no solid ground, no vegetation or animal life for many miles. There is no weather, except the wind blowing snow across the vast ice plateau. There is nothing for the wind to erode but the layers of ice and snow. There is nothing that disintegrates or decays or accumulates in the treads of your boots as you walk around outside. Any dirt or dust we encounter is due to our activities here and is made from the materials we import and use on the station.

The new station itself is kept exceptionally clean, so even the imported dust and grime is kept to a minimum. Everyone on station takes turns cleaning the bathrooms and common rooms, and a janitorial staff works around the clock to keep everything looking new.

So, it's with some irony that I will also cite the South Pole as one of the dirtiest places I have been. Rather, I should rephrase that - it is the place where I am regularly dirtiest. All of our water on station comes from melting ice, and this requires a huge amount of energy. Consequently, there are stringent restrictions on water use. Yes, we have running water and modern comforts in the South Pole Station, but we are allowed to take no more than two two-minute showers per week. After a while, you get used to it, and your regular showers back home seems like an extravagant indulgence. But even so, there is something funny about the contrast between the scruffy, sweaty, unwashed population and our spotless station and pristine environs.

Because everything in the station is so new and clean, there is also something endearing about any object that has been here long enough to show wear and tear, decay and change. When I am not working out at the Dark Sector Laboratory next to the telescope, I set up my laptop in the science lab in the main station. Like every other portion of the station, this lab is spotless and new. It was with some perverse pride that I claimed for myself one of the oldest most pathetic chairs on station as my seat for daily work when I first got here. These supposedly were the chairs from the galley in the old dome, and have seen years of constant use.

A week ago, a shipment of brand new chairs came in and we replaced all of the old chairs we had been using in the science lab. I helped to carry the old chairs out and place them in the 'non-recyclable' garbage bin out behind the station. It's silly to develop affection for something so nasty and downright uncomfortable, but I was a little sorry to see the chair go. However, if there is one other fact of the South Pole it's that anything useful gets reused until it completely falls apart. I have already spotted those chairs appearing in common spaces and personal spaces around the station, looking just as out of place in most of those as they did in our high-tech shining lab. Out of place, in a way, like all of our messy human activities in this stark white place.

Unbreakable Beaker

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 14:21:00 +0000

The entire South Pole Station exists solely to support science that can only be done in this unique location. The support is phenomenal, from the logistics and infrastructure support for building major projects to the genuinely delicious meals that sustain us all. The vast majority of the people who come to the pole work to keep this support going, maintaining demanding 60 hour work weeks on shifts that operate around the clock. Many of the crews spend their time doing vigorous physical labor in temperatures below -40F. The scientists are a small minority, who come to the pole typically for short periods of time, and often never fully integrate into the daily routine of the greater station community. While the whole South Pole culture is welcoming and accomodating to diverse (and eccentric) personalities, the scientists still stand out. There is a name for us - "beakers". It can be used affectionately, but is also appropriately applied when you see someone like myself wandering through the galley in a daze, having a visibly hard time avoiding collisions with the people around me. Everyone at the station works hard, but there is something about the relentless and unpredictable schedules of doing scientific work in the field that creates absentminded zombies from otherwise normal human beings.

I've been in that state quite a bit the last three weeks. The calibration measurements that I came here to do needed to be completed on a tight schedule, and were governed by the tempermental moods of the telescope receiver. To perform the measurements, we had to repeatedly cool the receiver down to a quarter of a degree above absolute zero, in order to operate our detectors. Graduate student Martin Lueker from Berkeley was responsible for tending the sensitive refrigeration technology that does this, and he had no easy time of it. We have been operating in less than ideal conditions, keeping the receiver down in our control room tilted at an angle that makes cooling more difficult. The process of cooling could take as many as 17 hours, at which point Martin and I would have to rush out and try to quickly perform measurements in the few hours that things stayed cold, no matter what time of day or night. At the worst, we were getting time windows of only two or three hours to perform measurements, and these could come at any time of day or night. The task of taking measurements was under intense time pressure and required extreme focus, since even a few minutes could mean the difference between getting the data we needed and having to wait until the next time we were cold.

In the last two weeks, I have worked almost continuously, and certainly every waking moment. When we haven't been able to perform measurements, I have scrambled to understand the data from the last set and to plan to make our limited time windows as efficient as possible. Over the last week or so I've switched from day to night shift almost every other day. I counted three days that I worked 20 hour shifts. One of these 20 hour shifts ended just hours before the formal celebration of Thanksgiving, which is celebrated on a Saturday here. I slept for a few hours, then woke up and put on a dress and nice shoes and wandered in to a spectacular candle-lit dinner that I was in no state to appreciate. In the midst of the relaxed and celebratory crowd, I felt out of place and longed for a chance to sleep and feel normal again.

Once I knew the FTS instrument worked well, I knew we would obtain the data we needed eventually. But I wasn't expecting it to be quite such an endurance test. As of a couple of days ago, we were still missing some critical data that we needed to call the FTS run complete. One morning, feeling discouraged, I was slumped over some coffee in the galley and I noticed a french press coffee maker that had been forgotten at the table. It was a plastic and new and had a sticker on it proudly proclaiming: 'Unbreakable Beaker'.

In an uncharacteristic act of desperation, I stole the sticker.

Unbreakable Beaker. It seemed a message meant just for me at that moment, and I took it and affixed it to the bib of my Carhartts on a strip of duct tape. All through the day, I reminded myself to be Unbreakable, and as silly as it was, it really helped! (I can't promise, as the sticker says, that I am actually dishwasher safe though). I think I will keep it for the rest of the season as a reminder to maintain my tenacity and also my sense of humor.

Tonight we finally finished the FTS run. I still have a lot of work to do analyzing the data, and plenty of other tasks for the season. But this marks a big accomplishment and I am relieved that it was a success - we got enough data to interpret the optical response of the receiver during last season. On my last trip back from the telescope tonight, Ken Aird snapped a picture for me, and you can see the little red message that got me through, taped to my bib.

Holding my breath

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:50:00 +0000

Bear with me - this is a long and technical update. But if you've been wondering what's been keeping me busy or why I'm here, here's more information than you ever wanted!

Normally, the work that I do for the SPT involves lots of programming. My main job is to put together the software tools that we need to look at the raw data from the telescope and process it into images that we can use to learn something about the evolution of the universe. A huge part of analyzing this sort of data is trying to understand as much as possible about the behavior of the telescope and the characteristics of the detectors that we use to observe light from the early universe. The measurements we are trying to make are exceptionally sensitive, and if the telescope isn't pointed exactly where we think it is, or if we don't fully
understand how the detectors respond to the radiation that they absorb, we can't interpret the raw signals that are recorded while we're observing the sky.

To me, the challenge of fully characterizing an instrument and all of the possible sources of uncertainty in a measurement is the most interesting part of experimental physics. Even though I work with this sort of stuff every day, I still think it seems crazy that we can claim to make valid, robust statements about something as grandiose or remote as the dawn of the universe or the evolution of its major components. What I find most inspiring and profound about experimental work is the careful and detailed arguments that experimentalists must make to justify and defend every statement that they make, in order to build up robust arguments backing up each claim. I personally want to be able to stand behind our measurements, to defend the correctness of our inferences, and to feel that I could explain every cross-check and every step in the argument that takes us from measurements of voltages in our detector readout to saying something about the entire universe. That's a tall order! But to me, it's the most interesting challenge and what motivates me.

Both because this whole facet of experimental work fascinates me, and also because I was available to spend the whole season at the pole this year, I got involved in some calibration measurements that we need to perform in order to understand our optics and response to light of different frequencies. Before we can interpret the signals that we recorded during our last season of observing, we need to know how sensitive the whole system is to microwave light of different wavelengths or frequencies. Like our eyes, the telescope is sensitive to a range of different frequencies of light. For our eyes, different frequencies manifest as different colors. Our eyes are most sensitive to colors that are yellow, and fall off in sensitivity at the low frequency end of the visible spectrum (the infrared) as well as the high frequency end (the ultraviolet). Similarly, we want to know which microwave frequencies our detectors see best, accounting for their own response as well as how the different parts of the optical system affect the light that they see.

To make this measurement, we take a radiating source (basically just a really hot object that emits a lot of light across a broad spectrum), and we send the light from that source through an optical device called a Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS). The FTS bounces the light through two paths and recombines it, then sends it through the window of our "optics cryostat", where it bounces off a big mirror and finally hits the detectors, which are held at a temperature just barely above absolute zero inside the "receiver cryostat". When we look at the signal that the detectors receive as we vary the path of the light through the FTS, we are able to probe how the whole system responds to light of different frequencies.

The FTS that we are using consists of an assembly of mirrors and fine wire grids mounted in a big metal box along with the radiation source. We had very little time to build this device before we came down, so we contracted with a company to build one for us. However, there were some shipping delays and I never got to see the thing before flying down here to meet it. We didn't even know for sure that all of the parts would fit together or that we would be able to mount it onto the optics cryostat where it could send light in towards the detectors, much less perform meaningful measurements with it.

So, when it finally arrived here, you can imagine how nervous I was to unpack the thing and see how it worked. Professor Steve Meyer back at Chicago designed many of the parts of the whole system, and he did a great job. It took a bit of problem solving to figure out how to put the thing together and get it mounted, but we were able to do so in just a couple of very busy days, with no major snags. Below is a picture of me mounting one of the mirrors into the box (which has its walls removed to make this easier). The picture was taken by Jeff McMahon.

Altogether, the FTS weighs a couple hundred pounds. So once we had the major pieces together, five of us VERY carefully lifted it and bolted it to the optics cryostat. The optics cryostat is the big white thing in the picture below. At the top of it, you can see part of a white circular window that is how microwave radiation enters the cryostat (the foam of the window is transparent to microwaves, but not to visible light). The red box that you see is the receiver cryostat. Inside that are all of the detectors. During normal operation, the two cryostats are hoisted up into the boom of the telescope and aimed so that the window faces the 10-meter dish of the telescope. In this configuration, we will mount some lenses to take the output of the FTS box and direct it into the window instead of pointing the window at the telescope mirror and out to the sky.

Below is another picture of the two cryostats, from the other side, so you can get a better sense of the size of these things. They're quite large, and the space in our control room is quite tight. A huge part of our efforts is keeping everything inside these cryostats very cold. Everything inside the big white cryostat is held at around ten degrees above absolute zero, while the detectors inside the red cryostat are held at a quarter of a degree above absolute zero. Only when we achieve these tiny temperatures can we actually use the detectors to make any kind of measurements.

The last step in the whole process of getting this thing ready, once we had the FTS mounted and the detectors cold, was to remove the metal plates protecting the fine wire mesh grids that are part of the optics of the FTS. These wire grids are made of tiny, fine wires stretched between two rings. The wires are so fine you can barely see them. They are so delicate you don't want to even breath on them, so the operation of getting in there with a wrench and removing those plates without damaging them was nothing short of petrifying. I think I held my breath the whole time, and I was sweating and shaking by the time I had all six plates removed. It's hard to photograph something this shiny, but you can see the wire grids in the photograph below - they look slightly gold-colored.

The last big question was whether we could turn on the radiation source and run the FTS and see it with the detectors. Two nights ago, we had a tiny window of time to try this, and graduate student Ryan Keisler and I stayed late out at the telescope to give it a first shot. With two laptops, we sat down on the floor and pulled up some plots showing us the data streaming live from one of the detectors. We moved the FTS around until the light from it was pointing right at that detector, then we ran the FTS. Amazingly, it produced a beautiful series of wiggles that told us immediately that everything was working. I just spent the last day looking at this data, and it looks great. I think we'll be able to get the calibrations that we need over the next week, and then move on to the next tasks for the season.

Right after we saw the first data from the FTS, Ryan and I shut down the laptops and raced back to the station to catch the rest of a science lecture being given by John Carlstrom, the head of the SPT project. The audience filled the galley and included all sorts of people from the station - janitors, cooks, carpenters, technicians... It was such an incredible feeling to walk in, breathless from the cold, and see this diverse and unique audience glued to John's descriptions of the telescope project and the science we are trying to do.

I didn't realize until we saw those beautiful little wiggles race across the computer screen that night that I had, in some sense, been holding my breath since arriving, not sure whether we would be able to pull this off. It's rare that you put together a brand new instrument and everything works the first time. So, now, I'm taking a huge deep breath and feeling a lot of relief...as well as excitement for the chance to get a better understanding of this incredible telescope.

Busy days on the ice

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:33:00 +0000

I've been at the pole for about a week now, and I not only settled in but extremely busy. My first task here is to perform some essential calibrations of the telescope, using an instrument that just arrived a couple of days ago on one of the flights. Each day I walk back and forth to the telescope several times, since the meals are all served back at the station. It's a 15 or 20 minute walk across the ice each way. Despite the fact that the landscape is utterly flat and featureless except for the station buildings, it is still so unique and so fascinating. Every day the features in the snow are different, and in the sunny weather we've had lately, the landscape is luminous and full of sparkle.

Made it!

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:50:00 +0000

If you've read my older blog entries, you might remember that I almost missed the flight from McMurdo to Pole last January, and I was the last one to report for transport. Well, I did it again. I took a nap in the afternoon, and during my nap the flight time got moved earlier than what had been most recently posted. I woke up all of five minutes before I was supposed to report. When I saw the latest updates on the screen, I threw all of my stuff together and ran up the hill to catch my ride down to the ice runway. The weather was beautiful and the trip this time was mercifully smooth. I spent almost the whole flight glued to the windows in the back of the plane. The flight over Antarctica offers a rare and exceptionally beautiful view. For most of the flight, we fly over the Transantarctic mountains. They are sizeable peaks, but they are drowned in ice up to two miles thick. Only the tiniest tips of the mountains peak out above the white. The view is unearthly, stunning, and mesmerizing. As we get closer to pole, the ice overwhelms the mountains and all that is left is a solid, featureless white plateau that shines in the sun. I enjoy this part of the trip so much... which I think you can tell from the picture at the bottom.

When we got to pole, the pilot came in to land, and then when we were just a few feet above the ground, took the plane back up again. I suddenly worried that we were being boomeranged again, or that something was wrong with the landing gear. But no, they just like to check out the skiway from the air if it hasn't been used in a little while. So we came right back and made a smooth landing, dumping cargo out the back of the plane as we slid down the skiway. I even saw a glimpse of the telescope through the window as we arrived, and I felt a rush of excitement.

I once again tried to snap a photo just moments after stepping onto the polar ice. It is hard to do while bundled up and with the shock of the cold and the need to quickly get away from the aircraft. The station was almost obscured by a huge pile of snow, the first pile of drifts that have been shoveled and cleared from the upwind side. As we were arriving, a large company of outgoing winterovers were gathered to immediately take off in the same plane. One of the two SPT winterovers, Zak Staniszewski, was on this flight, so I stayed to see him off. The picture below shows a shot of him and Steve Padin, our second winterover, at the end of their long eight months of operating the telescope. I could tell that it was a very emotional moment for all of the winterovers finally leaving the station. I only hope that Zak makes it to Christchurch soon to see his girlfriend and take a long, very well earned vacation.

All in the name of science

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:10:00 +0000

It is sometimes amazing to think that the massive infrastructure of the United States Antarctic Program is all here for the purpose of supporting science. At the South Pole, the biggest science projects are in astrophysics and cosmology, using the site as a unique observatory for probing the physics of the universe. Here at McMurdo, most of the science is concerned with the natural world closer to home: geophysics, biology, environmental science, and other disciplines about which I know very little. For the last week while stationed in MacTown (as it's affectionately called), I've been working from my laptop in the library/lounge at Crary Lab, the main science facility. The library has a spectacular view across the ice and is a really comfortable place for working (...as well as obsessively monitoring the activity on the ice runway outside, trying to tell whether they're preparing for us to fly anytime soon).

Spending time in Crary has also given me a glimpse into some of the many science projects taking place in this region of the continent. Downstairs, for example, there is a live feed from a camera at the opening of the volcano, Mount Erebus, that sits right above McMurdo. In the image, you can see the sloshing of the lava lake and the occasional explosions that jettison material out onto the icy upper slopes. Apparently, the lava lake is a relatively rare feature and the whole volcano is under constant active study by local scientists. They seem quite adventurous to me, heading out by helicopter to take trips to the volcano's peak. In the same part of the building, there are also scientists from the Andrill project, who are drilling deep into the sediments beneath the ice in order to study Antarctica's geological history.

You can't help but be totally captivated by the biological research taking place here, be it about penguins, seals, or critters from the bottom of the coldest sea. A few nights ago there was a public science lecture in the galley about the Wedell seals, and the audience was huge. There is something wonderful about seeing the enthusiasm everyone has here for the science that depends so much on their efforts to keep the station running.

One of my favorite memories from this trip will be visiting the Crary aquarium, which houses fish and other sea critters for study. They keep a "touch tank" filled with bright and bizarre animals that can be viewed up close, from your own hand. Two of the more colorful residents of the tank are shown below.

Finally, I have had another interesting encounter here with science that is far from my own field. A group from the Mayo clinic is performing a study on the physiological effects of high altitute. The South Pole is one of the few places where people regularly make trips to high altitude (it is physiologically equivalent to about 11,000 feet) without decending soon afterwards. So, as the polies come through McMurdo, the Mayo researches have been setting us up to do before-and-after studies. I signed up to participate in the study, which involved having 10 vials of blood taken (!) and a bunch of tests done to characterize my breathing. I also agreed to wear the "life shirt" while sleeping one night. Each of these tests will be repeated at pole, to see how the altitude has affected my body. The sleep studies are particularly interesting, since the high altitude is notoriously disruptive. With all of these wires attached to my body, I looked like a bizarre critter myself. But at least if I'm not able to be at the telescope working on my own science, I might as well help with someone else's.

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:14:00 +0000

It's Wednesday night here at McMurdo (we are a day ahead of the U.S.) and we just had yet another flight to pole cancelled. We were all packed up and out at the ice runway again and the weather turned blustery, the air becoming opaque with ice. You can't help but laugh about it though. When we all came wandering back into building 155 again, everyone else in the station certainly had a good chuckle. Nothing you can do about the weather. By now I think I've stripped my bed here four times and it was routine to come back in and go make it up again.

It's not all just waiting. We're managing to have a good time here too. A couple of nights ago there was an 80s dance party in one of the McMurdo bars. A bunch of people came over from Scott Base dressed in amazing costumes, with mohawk wigs and goofy sunglasses and the rest. Being stuck here without any of my luggage (it's all strapped into a pallet ready to fly at any moment), I did my dancing ever so stylishly in my USAP-issued insulated Carhartt coveralls.

After the party, my colleague Martin and I walked down to Hut Point at around midnight. This was the site where we saw penguins last year and where I was mesmerized watching the ice breaker working all through the night. This time, the bay was still covered completely in ice and the wind was blistering, so we couldn't linger for very long. On the way out, I was struck by the image of footprints in the snow, accumulating the raw volcanic dust of the surrounding landscape. Where each footstep falls, the snow compresses. When the wind blows, the snow between the prints flies away, but the compressed imprints of each bootstep stay solid, accumulating little snow drifts and eventually crumbling apart. The same thing happens in the ice at pole, and I've noticed it often on the path out to the telescope. There is something strange and haunting about seeing raised footprints withstanding the extreme winds, while everything else about the landscape drifts and changes so easily.

And once again, I took a moment (in a -45 degree windchill, it really was just a moment) to appreciate the midnight sun over the mountains. Just stunning. Even if all of the waiting at McMurdo can be frustrating, there is nothing like this view anywhere else.

Hurry up and wait

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:34:00 +0000

We've been stuck here in McMurdo for a few days. The typical trip to pole involves spending a night here, but if weather is bad in either location you can find yourself stranded here for days or even weeks. Right now, weather is bad in both places.

McMurdo has a large population during the summer season, housing more than a thousand people in a handful of dormatories on the side of a hill. Transients -- those bound for pole or various field camps -- are typically housed in the central building, building 155. This is also the building with the dining facilities, computer room, store, and various other services, all located along a central hallway called "Highway One". The picture above shows the front entrance to 155, and you can see some of the ubiquitous sorted waste containers out front. There are literally dozens of catagories of garbage here, since everything gets shipped back to the U.S. for recycling or disposal. Carefully sorting any trash you generate is a fixture of life here, as is obsessively washing your hands to avoid getting sick or spreading any illness in these close quarters. There are handwashing stations right inside the doors of 155, and there are signs everywhere urging good hygiene practices to keep everyone healthy.

Since we've been here, we have been on almost constant alert for flights to pole. Each day, we wake up early to meet our original departure time, but then the time slides later and later in the day as the weather continues to be prohibitive on one end or the other. Flight manifests are posted along Highway One and television screens give us regular updates on the weather and the flight schedules. A lot of our time in the last couple of days has been spent standing in the hallway watching these screens and trading rumors we've heard about the weather conditions and our odds of flying anytime soon.

On Monday, we actually made it into a plane and halfway to pole, but conditions at pole deteriorated and we had to turn back. By the time we had flown back to McMurdo, conditions here were extremely windy. Two other planes that had also "boomeranged" were forced to divert to the nearby Italian station, Terra Nova. Our pilot was determined to land us, and took us through three bumpy failed approaches before finally landing us safely. The turbulence during the failed approaches was intense enough to make quite a few people sick, and even once we were back on the ground I felt wobbly and disoriented for a while. It was shocking to see what the conditions really were on the ground -- it was so blustery that I found myself sliding across the ice if I stood still. I took a shot of the plane through the window as we rode Ivan back to the station, glad to be back on the ground for a little while.

Back to the ice

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 03:53:00 +0000

Who's getting the big hug? Actually, it's a dummy at the Antarctic Center museum. On the morning of our flight to Antarctica, we arrive early and put on all of our Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear prior to the flight. We then have a little break to get some breakfast or write a few last emails before we leave. The terminal is located just a few steps from the Antarctic Center, which is a local tourist attraction. The dummies in the picture are dressed up in their own ECW gear, but it's much more fun for the tourists to see a bunch of actual Antarctic workers and scientists gather for the flight down. Especially if the weather is warm in Christchurch, we look pretty silly in our giant red parkas and heavy white boots. Silly or not, the process gets you geared up for cold weather and also, for me, jumpstarts my sense of excitement.

The flight to McMurdo base takes about five hours, on a military C17 cargo plane. The last time I took this trip, the plane was fitted with many rows of seats to accomodate large numbers of passengers to the ice. This time, we numbered few enough that the seats along the wall were sufficient and all of the interior space was used for cargo. The picture below is just at the moment of lift-off, headed to the ice. Most of the people in the shot are new to the USAP and they are all doing a good job of looking cool, even though they are starting on such an unusual trip.

Because it's early in the season, we landed on the ice runway at McMurdo. There are three runways usually used, and I have now been through all of them. This one is constructed right out on the sea ice in the bay. Last year, I came through later in the season when this very ice was being broken apart to make way for the massive supply ship that makes an annual visit. Below you can see the C17 after landing. You can also see a group of Kiwis bound for the New Zealand station, Scott Base. All of their clothing and gear is in soft colors of blue and green, while the US participants are always somewhat jarring in our bright reds and oranges.

A short walk from the airplane, "Ivan the Terra Bus" awaits us, to give us a ride back to "town". The last picture below is a shot that I took out of Ivan's window. The sky was absolutely beautiful and I was once again overwhelmed by the experience of being on the ice.

Local Color

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 04:34:00 +0000

Christchurch is a welcoming place to come to on the way in or out of Antarctica. The Antarctic program seems to permeate everything. A tour bus topped with penguin statues makes the rounds regularly through town. Hotels and restaurants are decorated with photographs from Antarctic voyages of the past and present. And you can't walk very far in town without running into someone coming from or going to the ice. Within my first hours in town, I had already encountered several winterovers on their way back from a long dark eight months at the South Pole. Although they seemed well, each had a certain delirious and overwhelmed sense about them -- thrown back into the real world and not quite sure how to adjust to it once again.

For my first night in town, I went back to the Dux, the pub where Antarctic program participants seem to collect daily during the travel seasons. In addition to catching up with a couple of people I hadn't seen since last season, I also met many more. I spent most of the evening trying to explain the expansion of the universe to a handful of heavy equipment operators destined for McMurdo station. One of the best things about this whole program is how it brings together an assortment of colorful, interesting personalities, and people who wouldn't necessarily intersect with each other in their normal lives. I have a lot of fun listening to all of the personal stories, and it's also great how curious everyone is to hear about the SPT and the science that we're doing.

Seeing the returning winterovers did make me more aware, though, of just how far away I was about to go. For my last day in Christchurch, I made sure to soak in as much as I could of the sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of a city in the springtime. I ate lots of spicy food filled with fresh vegetables and cheese, enjoyed the bustle of the busiest streets, and absorbing the spectacular botanic garden. For more than three months, the colors of my natural landscape will be blue, white, and grey, with just a touch of gold from the sun. I spent an especially long time lingering in the botanic gardens just drinking in the colors and smells. I'm hoping that these photographs on my laptop will give me a quick, bright break from the everyday while I'm working at pole this season.

Inventive Improvisations

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 02:00:00 +0000

It's the beginning of Austral Summer and I'm once again headed down to the South Pole Station for work on the South Pole Telescope. This time I'm going for the whole season - November through mid-February. I'm writing this blog entry on the Qantas flight to New Zealand, and it still doesn't quite feel real yet. I have already met up with quite a few others who are headed down to pole, including some friends from last year. This time, I know what to expect from the experience and my approach to everything - packing, travel, expectations - has been tuned based on the experiences from last year. Even so, it's been a long eight months back in Chicago and there is nothing commonplace or ordinary about this trip, even if parts of it now feel familiar.

A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed about SPT for a planetarium program showing in Kalamazoo, Michigan sometime next spring. Out of all of the questions, there was only one that I had a hard time answering. Roughly, the question went: "What was the most inventive improvisation you saw in the lab while you were at the South Pole?"

On the surface, this is a really straightforward question. Since it is very difficult to get equipment shipped to the South Pole (and the equipment you manage to obtain often fails in unexpected ways), any major project at the South Pole Station must be full of funny little improvised patches, last-minute work-arounds, and creative rearrangements. Yet, I had a hard time answering it. First of all, our project manager Steve Padin did such an exceptional job planning and orchestrating the deployment of our telescope that there were spares and back-up solutions readily available...not to mention that most of the parts of the telescope went together and worked well the first time - a remarkable achievement. Also, my work at the pole last season involved a lot of scrambling to write software, so I might not have been as aware of the creative problem solving that went into the hardware. But even had I been, "creative problem solving" (a.k.a. kludging) is so commonplace in the laboratories back in Chicago that the lab at the South Pole can seem pristine and orderly in comparison. In the laboratories I normally work in, we're constantly grabbing for a strip of duct tape or a stretch of rubber hose or some other quick fix to an immediate problem. Much more planning goes into working within the tight constraints of the South Pole, and our first season with the SPT went for the most part quite smoothly.

However, I wasn't really thinking any of this when I was asked that question. I was thinking, instead, that the most inventive improvisations I saw at pole weren't in the laboratory. They were in the social lives of a group of people crammed together in a remote station at the end of the earth. What do you do with your time, when you're away from all of your normal pursuits, isolated from media and culture, with limited internet access and absolutely no place to go? Of all of the things that amazed me about the experience of going to the South Pole for the first time, witnessing the creative social environment was one of the things I most enjoyed.

Of course, people get together and watch movies and share a few beers, as you'd expect. But what you might not expect are the extensive film and photography projects, the ice sculptures, the costume parties, and the level of ridiculous humor present in so many interactions. Last year, I remember seeing people dressed up and thinking "Who brings feather boas to the south pole?" This year, I considered bringing feather boas of my own. In the comparative comfort of the modern South Pole Station, fighting the elements is not nearly so difficult as fighting cabin fever and restlessness. I have rarely had as much ridiculous fun as I did just hanging around last season, and this year I am prepared for that as much as I'm prepared to do my job and stay healthy while I'm there.

Appropriately, I just spent the last weekend in my home town of Athens, Ohio, for the weekend of the annual Halloween block party. This is a huge event, drawing thousands of costumed out-of-town visitors to join partying Ohio University students in taking over the main street of town. Halloween block-party memories are a fixture in my personal history. Noteably, for example, the years that my father dressed up as the "Roller Ghost" and roller-skated at top speed down the steep (and bumpy brick!) main drag, bellowing his way into collective memory.

It's probably been a decade since I was home for the big party and I almost didn't think of it when I came back last weekend to drop off my cats and wrap up my affairs. But the day before the big bash I found myself at the local vintage store shopping for my own costumes. The place was crazy with wigs being tossed around and dozens of people in half-costumed states, looking for the pieces needed to complete each outfit. I didn't have any particular thing in mind, but I was browsing for ridiculous dress-up wear. While I was trying on dresses, testing out accessories and wondering how I could cram each outfit into my luggage, a shopkeeper (wrapped in a feather boa herself) asked me what I was trying to dress up as for Halloween. My reply? It's not for Halloween, it's to dress up and have a great time at the South Pole! I know it sounds bizarre. It is bizarre! But bizarre is great - it's so full of life and just exactly what I want right now.

This has been a rough year for me, so I'm going to the pole this time a bit worn out. I'm in the middle of a divorce and I had to move out of my apartment in Chicago just a few months after moving it, putting all of my things in storage and shutting down my life until I return from the pole. Through all of this, I have been paranoid that my work efforts have suffered, and I am also worried about how much work we need to do at pole this season. My entire life right now requires inventive improvisations, much more so than at any other time I can remember. The night of the big Athens block party, I walked down the main street by myself and watched all of the halloween outfits and the crowds of friends out having a great time. There is something so important about finding ways to laugh and enjoy life, even when it's crazy, or even when it's 40 degrees below zero and you're as far away from your normal life as you possibly could be. I am looking forward to this season at the South Pole.. And even if I'm not ready for the scientific work I have to do, I'm ready to dress up in an absolutely outrageous red dress, should the need arise.

There is no decaf coffee at the south pole

noreply@blogger.com (Kathryn Schaffer) — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:52:00 +0000

In the galley, there are two coffee spigots. But instead of the usual "regular" and "decaf", they're labeled "regular" and "high-octane", made extra strong. This suits me just fine. It also suits a station that operates 24 hours of the day, where people often find themselves shifting their schedule back and forth from days to nights or the other way around.

My schedule has stayed fairly constant: I went on the night shift in the first few days I was here, and that's where I've stayed. My routine has me downing several cups of the high-octane brew every evening at around 8pm before I head out to the lab to work. In some ways, it makes no difference when you are awake and when you sleep here. The sun is always at the same height, it just shines from different directions depending on the time of day. People are working and sleeping at all hours, and it's easy to program yourself to view 8pm as if it were 8am, and vice versa. But there are still significant differences. Most of the station operates on a day shift, so planes come and go during the day, the halls are busy with people, and most socializing happens in the evening hours. Being on the day shift als0 has the advantage that you can eat normal meals at their normal times. Night shifters wake up to dinner, have "midrats" for lunch, and then come to breakfast after work.

I still prefer the night shift, even though I've had french toast for "dinner" most days of the week for a month. It's quieter and calmer. The midrats meals lately have been absolutely fantastic. The satellite is up during the night, so it's easier for me to look up references online while I work. Plus, I've enjoyed spending time with the night crew and having the social areas of the station mostly to ourselves while the day-shifters are at work.

As the season is drawing to a close, I'm so used to the south pole schedule that I barely think about it anymore. I've adjusted to the sun circling the sky all the time, and I don't really mind that it never gets dark. But three nights ago (where by "night" I really mean morning, when I was headed back from work) I saw something I hadn't seen since we got here: the moon. It's been circling around in the sky going higher and higher for the last few days. Seeing it made me miss night, the real kind of night.

(look for the moon - a tiny white spot just to the left of the telescope)