A relatively quiet week it was, last week at the Pole. As far as the IceCube detector goes, quiet is good. There are always regular maintenance tasks and occasional issues that require troubleshooting, but nothing that hinders its performance. The detector has maintained a very high uptime over its many years of operation. And that’s […]
Last week (well, on May 26), there was a rare super blood moon event—the coinciding of a supermoon, when the moon is at its closest to the Earth, and a blood moon, when the moon turns red as it enters Earth’s shadow during a lunar eclipse. The eclipse was only visible in parts of the […]
It was relatively quiet last week at the Pole. There were auroras, though, which gave winterover Martin a chance to take some great outdoor photographs. He walked out to the satellite dish domes with one of the communication engineers on station. This is Martin’s second stint as an IceCube winterover, but on his first time […]
It’s night at the South Pole—dark skies all the time, no sunlight for months—but that doesn’t mean there is no light. Last week, IceCube’s winterovers found clear skies with enough light from the stars and auroras overhead that they didn’t need to rely on their headlamps as they made their way to the IceCube Lab […]
Some people love to camp out in tents. But outside at the South Pole? Not sure how many takers there would be for that. Last week, however, intrepid IceCube winterover Josh willingly spent the night in a tent pitched outside the South Pole station’s main entrance. Looks like he rested peacefully, as shown below. Above, […]
The moon was out big time last week, and it was bright enough to allow the IceCube winterovers to turn off their headlamps a bit while they were working outside. Both the above and below images show Josh in the middle of removing the cover from the IceAct telescope that is on the roof of […]
Among all the healthy activities at the Pole lately is the “Climb to Mt. Everest” challenge, performed by climbing the stairs of the “beer can” (the vertical tower at the end of the station that connects the levels). The tower has 94 steps, and winterovers Josh and Martin are doing five beer cans a day, […]
The first auroras of the season are in! This is always such an exciting time, not only for those folks lucky enough to be at the Pole but also for those of us who only get the long-distance armchair experience. In IceCube winterover Martin’s selfie below, it almost looks as though he is somehow creating […]
So, how many South Poles are there? Above we see a beautiful sunset image taken last week at the Pole. This location is the ceremonial South Pole, easy to identify by the lineup of flags representing the original signatories of the Antarctic Treaty. It’s a place for photo ops, but it’s not what’s generally referred […]
Let the twilight begin! Even though twilight occurs only twice a year at the South Pole, it is a drawn out process that lasts weeks instead of hours. At sunset, the light outside slowly dwindles before leaving the Pole in complete darkness. Even then, it’s not always fully dark since, while the sun may be […]