What better time and place for an outdoor astronomy class than midwinter at the South Pole? Clear skies present a group of expectant gazers with a multitude of stars for their viewing pleasure. […]
Week 18 at the Pole
Life at the Pole
Week 17 at the Pole
It helps for IceCube winterovers to be handy and versatile. With no incoming supplies during the winter months, they have to make do with what they have on hand—if they need a new tool, they craft it, or if something breaks (or rips), they fix it. […]
Week 16 at the Pole
Now there’s a flashy aurora! You know (and it’s not hard to imagine), they say a photo really can’t do justice to these aurora australis—to how impressive they really are when viewed in person. […]
Week 15 at the Pole
This is what the ICL porch looks like as it gets darker outside, bathed in red light (just two short weeks ago things looked a bit different). For the benefit of research projects that monitor the sky during winter darkness, outdoor lighting at the South Pole is minimized and kept to a red spectrum, which reduces interference. […]
Week 14 at the Pole
See anything? Well, there is something there, in this season’s first photo of an aurora from the IceCube winterovers. Many more aurora shots to come, guaranteed. […]
Week 13 at the Pole
The IceCube Laboratory (ICL) is home to a computer complex that collects and processes data from the experiment’s optical sensors buried in the ice. […]
Week 12 at the Pole
The darkness of night tells us that we’re in the Earth’s shadow. But who thinks about the Earth’s shadow during the day? Actually, it’s often visible but we fail to recognize it. […]
Week 11 at the Pole
So many images from last week … where to begin? The IceCube winterovers captured quite a few shots of the sun as it continued to set. Looks like they also built an igloo. […]
Week 10 at the Pole
Surprise, surprise—a little creature snuck in to the South Pole station, presumably in the last fresh food shipment. “Dustin” the moth was found fluttering around the lab. […]
Week 9 at the Pole
It’s a small community wintering over at the South Pole—they help each other out. When not immediately involved in their detector duties, IceCube’s winterovers might be found volunteering their assistance with other scientific projects. […]