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ORD -> LAX -> SYD -> CHC -> MCM -> NPX
The airport codes provide a glimpse of the long journey to the South Pole. While not as harrowing as the epic sea voyages and sledge journeys of Antarctic explorers of old, traveling to 90 S today is still a memorable experience.

For many of us the journey begins in the United States. Leaving behind the chilly late fall weather in Chicago (ORD), I flew to foggy Los Angeles (LAX) where I boarded a 747 for the 14 hr flight to Sydney, Australia (SYD). Shedding my coat in the warm Aussie airport I next hopped a short 2 hour flight to Christchurch (CHC) on the South Island of New Zealand.

Christchurch is the base of the United States Antarctica Program, handling transport of cargo and personnel to the ice. Bright and early the morning after we fly in we are issued the Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) Gear that will keep us safe and comfortable in the harsh Antarctic climate.
The ECW takes up two large duffle bags and includes:

•  Knit cap
• Balaclava
• Ski Goggles — Critical, as the glare is incredible (everything is snow-covered and the sun is up 24 hours/day)
• Neck Gator
• “Big Red” — A big down jacket. As almost everyone has the exact same jacket and is bundled up from head to toe, you quickly learn to identify people by their hats, goggles, height or gait.
• Carhartts (thick overalls) or snow pants
• Mittens, gloves, glove liners (we also insert hand warmers when we work outside; touching the cold metal telescope quickly chills our hands even through the gloves)
• Fleeces, Long underwear, thick socks
• “Bunny” boots or FX boots

Following gear issue and various safety and logistical briefings we are free for the day. Now comes one of the best parts of this journey — a day in Christchurch. Christchurch in November (Spring in the Southern Hemisphere) is a haven. It’s a wonderful experience to walk through the Botanical Gardens under the warm sun — the roses are blooming, birds singing, and ducklings waddling about— and is fortifying against the coming bitterly cold and arid weather we will experience in Antarctica.


Stocked up on Freshies (fresh fruits and veggies) and after one last good meal it’s off to the ice! We boarded a C17 that flew us from Christchurch to McMurdo (MCM) on Ross Island Antarctica.

MacTown, as the locals call it, is the main US base in Antarctica. With a population of roughly 800 people in the summer, it’s a key logistics center. Flights from Christchurch ferry in personnel and supplies that are then sent off to bases and field camps across the Antarctic continent. Keeping the system running smoothly can be challenging. Our flight from Christchurch was delayed a day and flights to the South Pole had been backed up for a week owing to bad weather. Fortunately for us, our flight out of MacTown took off on schedule. An LC-130 transported us from sea-level Ross Island across the beautiful barren landscape to the high Antarctic plateau where we landed at South Pole Station (NPX), our home for the coming months.



For more photos of Christchurch and McMurdo check out this link.

We are very excited to be taking part in the 2nd USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington DC April 28-29.
The event is free and held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. We've partnered with Bo Rodda's class at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago to meld science and creativity into an exhibit that we hope you'll enjoy.
SPT scientists will be on hand to answer all of your questions about SPT and the science we explore. Hope to see you there!

Read more about the SPT exhibit: 100 Years of Exploration @ South Pole: From Survival to Science
here, and check out the festival on Facebook.

As of February 6, the new and improved SPT receiver is installed in the telescope and looking into the heavens. The last 10 days or so until South Pole Station closes for the winter are being spent characterizing the new array, focusing the telescope, and (this one is really important) making sure our 2008 winterovers Keith and Dana are prepared to run this beast and deal with any situations that might arise. Once these tasks are completed, we will settle into a stable observing routine for the winter season.

As a teaser, here's an image made from one of our regular observations of a galactic HII source:

Upcoming Live Webcast: Dec. 21 2007

Be sure to visit the Exploratorium's website for another live webcast from pole on Dec. 21, 2007 at 8 am CST.

It has been a while since we last posted but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy. We just finished observing for this season and it was a success! Since deployment lots of exciting things have taken place. The SPT winter-overs, Zak Staniszewski and Steve Padin, have been living at the South Pole running the telescope. Since the SPT detectors operate at very low temperatures, the winter-overs spent part of each day cooling the detectors and setting them. Then, when the telescope is ready to observe, they use a computer to command the telescope to point at the regions of the sky that the collaboration decided to observe this Austral Winter. Each day the data is sent back to the SPT collaboration via satellite and the analysis team sets to work processing the raw data. One of the main goals of the analysis at this stage is to understand how each element of the instrument is working. The telescope is a very complicated instrument and before we are ready to use this data for science, we want to be really sure we understand how everything is working, especially the hundreds of individual detectors making up the camera. The next step in the analysis is to write a complicated set of computer programs that take raw data and process it into maps of the sky. We will be working hard over the coming months to prepare these maps and study them. Besides the analysis, there is a flurry of activity as we work to create an updated receiver to install on the telescope during the coming Austral Summer. Already, the first few members of the collaboration are headed back down to the pole to begin this season's work on the telescope


Below are some great pictures of the telescope during the Austral Winter taken by Zak Staniszewski and Steve Padin.



The telescope after a storm.




The aurora, a phenomenon seen most commonly at the poles of the earth caused by the interaction of the solar winds and the particles in the earth's magnetosphere.




The moon shining brightly behind the telescope.



The sunrise after a long dark winter. Since the earth's axis of rotation is tilted with respect to the light coming from the sun it is always dark for part of the year at South Pole and always light the other part of the year. For this reason, the sunrise is a very special event.




The white snow and telescope looking beautiful as the rising sun reflects off them.

Now that the busy polar summer season is over, things have gotten much quieter around here. Although there are just two SPT team members (Zak Staniszewski and Steve Padin) left at pole, there is still tons of work to do! Right now we are busy commissioning the telescope, and thus far everything is progressing well. Here is a shot of the SPT scanning during these early tests:



Be sure to go check out the newly revised SPT Multimedia page where we've uploaded lots of movies and photos from both the test build in the US and construction at pole this season.

Now that February is here, the temperatures at the South Pole Station have begun to drop again, and the station is preparing to close for the winter. Most of the people currently working at the station will fly out within the next couple of weeks, leaving only a core group of "winterovers" here who will stay through the extremely cold and dark months of the Antarctic winter.

The University of Chicago "reflector assembly team", consisting of Tom, Jeff, Joaquin and Ryan, has already left the ice. But many members of the SPT project are still here until the very end of the summer season to work on the receiver, the last few details of the telescope itself, and the software used to control the telescope and interpret the data that we take with it. At the moment, we are busy cooling down the receiver and the secondary optics in order to test how everything works when we put it all together. It's a very busy time, with people working around the clock.

Even though we all tend to be very focused on whatever tasks are currently at hand, everyone in the team finds themselves sometimes just staring at this beautiful telescope and admiring everything that has already been achieved this year. It really is a gorgeous instrument, and it's especially impressive to see how smoothly it moves. From the windows of the indoor laboratories where most of our work is taking place, we can see the last remaining crews who are working on the telescope outside in the cold. To assemble this enormous telescope has taken teams of iron workers, electricians, insulation workers, carpenters, and many other specialists here at the Station and back in the U.S. It's been incredible to be here and see how the whole South Pole Station is pushing for the success of this project.

Before the Chicago reflector assembly team left, we had a chance to take some pictures of them together with the iron workers and telescope specialists who played big roles in the construction of the telescope. Many of these individuals went through the process of test-building the telescope in Texas last summer, and here they are at the completion of the final instrument in one of the harshest places on earth. It's truly a great group of people and they've done an amazing job. All of the rest of us are in awe!

posted by Kathryn Schaffer at 10:50 AM