One Week Complete

We've been here for one week! Tonight is Italian night in the galley, which is always an enjoyable feast. It's the one meal a week we can have a glass of wine with our dinner, so it is pretty nice. Everything has been going fairly well on the other side of Earth. We launched another balloon a couple of days ago (don't worry; I'll post some launch pictures as soon as I can get my hands on some). The launch went really well. During the launches, a couple of us drive up to the top of this hill just outside of town where there is a communications building. We have one of our receiving stations in there because it has a great view of the sky all around it. When we left the building this time, this is what we saw:
For this one, you really have to enlarge the thumbnail to get the best perspective, but isn't that cool? This is looking pretty much due North, and the sun was setting. The lighting was just right that the sky was brilliant orange and back lit the mountains. Pretty awesome.

As for my photo project, enjoy "McMurdo Fog":
It is dark like that because that is exactly what it looked like for us. Notice how Ob Hill is pretty unrecognizable. Hopefully, we will get a Condition 1 storm (visibility = zero) and I can take a shot then.

Hope things are well in the Northern Hemisphere. More posts to come!

Fixed picture problem

UPDATE: Problem fixed! Many thanks to the folks in the seal group on station for helping me diagnose the problem I have been having with Firefox. I now have four internet browsers on my computer... I think I'll keep them. They make me look geeky.

Here are some bonus pictures.

This was the view yesterday as the sun rose over the station. These are the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen.

And here is picture number one for my photo project:

This is Observation Hill with the National Science Foundation's Chalet in the foreground. This one is "Sun rising over McMurdo". I'm going to take the same shot every day (or every other day), at different times of day the whole time I am here. Like Monet.

Anyway, things are OK here. We launched an ozonesonde two days ago. The next instrument we'd like to launch is one of our particle counters. Hopefully, we can do that tomorrow.

Courage.

I have arrived!

UPDATE: Pictures are now linked. Click on the thumbnails to view the full sized picture.

Hello! I writing to you from Antarctica! After two delays in Christchurch (which ended up being a nice break), we woke up on Saturday at 2:30 am and headed to the airport to gear up and board the plane. We took off at about 7:30 am New Zealand time, and arrived over McMurdo a little over 5 hours later.

Landing in a C-17 is strange. You can't see anything, and all you can do to figure out where you are and how far away from the ground you are is to try to "feel" the way the plane is moving and shaking. The crew told us it was about -25 F on the ground at McMurdo, and boy, they were right. Cold! But this year, I was prepared. I managed to capture a few pictures of my first moments on the ice.

Here's a view of the plane behind me as I walked away from it. The air was full of ice and diamond dust particles, so I think these images are quite impressive.

Here are all of us Antarcticans boarding Ivan the Terra Bus to be taken back to McMurdo. I didn't ride on Ivan but on a bus, instead.

It has been pretty nice here, and it is only day 2. Tonight, as well as last night, there were pretty spectacular polar stratospheric clouds (or, nacreous clouds) all over the skies surrounding the station. This evening, I couldn't help myself, and had to take a couple pictures.

How about them apples? If you are new to my blog, and you're not sure what these strange things are, I explain the phenomenon a few posts back. We try to take ozone measurements when these clouds are present because they are key in the destruction of ozone. To measure these clouds, we use a LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to measure the light scattered from the clouds. The characteristic green LIDAR beam is well known around station, and here is my best 4 second exposure shot of it:

For now, it is time for me to get ready for bed. We have another long day of getting all of our gear in order and ready for a launch. Hopefully, we can launch tomorrow. Until next time: courage.

Day Four in Christchurch

We are on our second 24 hour weather delay today. I suppose the weather in McMurdo is not good for flying. Christchurch is a beautiful city, but I'm ready to get to work and measure some ozone. Maybe the third times the charm.

Hugh is my adventurer again this year. He had such a good time freezing on the ice last year that he decided to join me again. I'd put some pictures up, but the wireless here isn't letting me. Oh well.

We have had nice weather since we've been here. That makes biding the time a little easier. We don't really know what we're going to do today, but I'm fine with just taking it easy and relaxing a little.

Well, I'll keep you all up to date on when we get to the ice. Hopefully, tomorrow's the day.

I'll be back!

In case you haven't heard and are still following this, I'm going back to the ice this August!

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures!

Last few days

We only have a few days left (we leave a week from today), so I have been trying to pack a few last minute adventures in, while I still can.
Today we had to take a trip to start packing some of our equipment away, so on the way home, we stopped at the Scott Base sign post.
Ooh! They have camping, picnic, dining and even docking facilities! (Can you find Goldbug in this picture? AKA, Hugh)

Later this evening we hiked to the top of Observation (Ob) Hill. It was a spectacular night. Beautiful sky, and beautiful station. The hike was a bit rough for me, what with the asthma and all, but we made it to the top and got some amazing pictures.

As we hiked higher and higher, I took pictures to mark our progress. Here is Hugh and the station below him.


And here we are together about mid way up the hill.
Finally, we made it to the top. Where's Hugh? (There sure are a lot of crosses around station.) Isn't it beautiful?

Because Hugh didn't get any pictures at Happy Camper, I wanted to make sure we got one in front of Mount Erebus.
It was a great hike. And the best part was: we got to slide down the whole thing coming down. Weeeee!

Next post = Last post from the Ice. :-(

Antarctic optical phenomena

Because of the extreme cold temperatures, both near the ground and above us, there are some pretty amazing optical phenomena to be seen. The first, and one that you will probably be familiar with is the 'sun dog'.
This phenomenon is also referred to as 'mock suns' because of the appearance of one (or, in this case, two) bright spots next to the sun. This picture also shows some of the arc around the sun, too. On this day, it was a beautiful clear day. But on walking outside, the air all around us was glittering. There were ice crystals everywhere (Not snow. Think smaller. They are referred to as 'diamond dust'.) It was these crystals that gave us such beautiful sun dogs. Ice crystals have hexagonal shapes, and as light passes through these little crystals, the light is reflected and refracted back into the viewer's line of sight, causing bright spots.

The second phenomena is really only 'optical' when there is light to interact with them, but occur when the temperatures are just right. We all know that clouds form in the troposphere (or we do now), but what if I told you that there were stratospheric clouds? My God! She must be mad! No. I'm not.
I know, I know. Not much to look at. But this is the only one I saw all season. Just before we arrived on the Ice, we were told that the sky was filled with them, causing the most beautiful sunsets you have ever seen. And boy, were they right:

This picture is in focus (see the horizon). But doesn't it look like an artist just brushed the sky with his brush? Simply amazing. This picture was taken by the station dentist, Kim. The previous one was taken by Luca who ran the LIDAR.
So what are these? They are called polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) or nacreous clouds (when you can see them). They can only form when stratospheric temperatures are very cold (-80 degrees Celsius. That's -112 F) and at altitudes between 15 and 30 km (about 50-100,000 feet). They are composed of water and nitric acid. But not to worry, they are completely natural. We are particularly interested in these clouds because of their reaction with ozone. Long story short, these clouds produce activated chlorine which is an ozone destroyer. When these clouds are present (Antarctic winter), the ozone hole intensifies. We measured these clouds when we first got here, but they are quick to disappear due to the rapid warming of the stratosphere as we got more and more sunlight.

The last phenomenon is a personal favorite of mine: fata morgana. This is a type of mirage (superior). Inferior mirages are the ones we are most familiar with. This is what you see when driving on a hot road and there appears to be a pool of water in front of you. What is actually happening is the sunlight is being refracted, or bent. Similar to putting a straw into a glass of water and seeing that it "bends", light is bent toward the colder (denser) air. For Fata Morgana to appear, the surface temperature has to be colder than the air above it. Here is some amazing fata morgana we saw, as photographed by Luca:
Do you see that strange band of "cliffs" at the bottom of the mountains? Looks pretty fake, right? Well, it is. This is the fata morgana. Light is bent toward the colder air, but our eye interprets that as being higher than reality. Here is a nifty slide I made to try to explain it better.
Angry Man is seeing the refracted light from the mountain, but his eyes follow the same line up (they don't curve back down). So what he thinks he sees is a really tall cliff, or mountain.

I hope that makes sense. It is easier to explain in person. But that's it for Antarctic Optics, Leslie Style.