The horizon at the South Pole continues to slowly brighten with every passing day. Unfortunately, the brownouts and blackouts that had occurred the prior week at the Pole also continued, but—again—all was brought back to normal with no major problems resulting. Also last week, IceCube winterover Moreno, in conjunction with Concordia Station, launched a radio-sounding […]
Although the skies were cloudy, the moon shone bright over the IceCube Lab (ICL) last week. IceCube winterovers were paged during the week for a misbehaving DOM, which required a trip out to the ICL (bonus: some nice moonlit photos), but in general it was a relatively calm week on the detector side of things. […]
Last week was action-packed at the South Pole. The beginning of the week had IceCube’s winterovers busy with diagnosing and troubleshooting some computer issues, which required a couple of visits to the IceCube Lab (ICL). They took advantage of these visits to also perform a few maintenance tasks at the ICL while they were there. […]
Although it is still night at the South Pole, the sun is making a slow rise toward the horizon, and it’s getting close to twilight. Some folks are excited to see the sun again, while others mourn the end of winter. But it will take weeks for the sun to fully rise over the horizon, […]
Last week at the Pole was restful—finally. No Polympics or other competitive sporting events, no emergency response training, no outreach talks…and a super-quiet detector. The IceCube detector’s uptime was 99.95%, its maximum value given small downtimes required for maintenance and operation. The night skies on the other hand were not so quiet. A major solar […]
With the Polympics now over, you’d think the winterovers might be resting a bit—but not this crew. Last week at the Pole, a number of winterovers, including IceCube’s Celas, participated in a tetrathalon competition with another station. This event had them running on treadmills and skiing outside, which for Celas was only his second time […]
Last week at the Pole it was still “first work, then play.” The “work” entailed more or less routine monthly maintenance tasks and reporting. The “play,” on the other hand, was anything but routine. Last week marked the end of the Polympics, although the Antarctic Games extended for another week. At the Pole, there were […]
First there’s work, then there’s play. Last week at the Pole, IceCube’s winterovers were paged during the night (twice!) and had to trek out to the IceCube Lab for some troubleshooting. Unfortunately, no night sky photos were taken on these trips. But in their spare time, planning continued for this year’s Antarctic Games. The team […]
Last week at the Pole was quiet for the IceCube detector but a bit busy in the South Pole station, where the first planning meeting for the upcoming Antarctic Games was held. Several years ago, the South Pole station inaugurated its version of the Olympic winter games. Since then, they have held an annual “Polympics” […]
Even though they recently had a fancy dinner at the South Pole, last week supplied a reason for another one. It was the celebratory feast for midwinter, which included cocktails and appetizers followed by a several-course meal. Guests were invited to attend dressed for a masquerade ball. The South Pole station has a long history […]