The skies might be getting a bit brighter as sunrise approaches, but last week at the Pole saw some rapidly dropping temperatures, reaching -100 F over the weekend. That’s not record-breaking, but it is extremely cold nonetheless. Severe cold doesn’t stop winterovers from doing their planned outdoor activities, however. Above, we see them all gathered […]
IceCube winterover Marc recently captured a nice swath of green auroras swirling above a bright low moon. It’s likely one of the last aurora photos of the season—as daylight begins to infiltrate the South Pole skies, auroras must be really bright in order to be seen. The images below of the telescopes in the Dark […]
The end of winter may be in sight at the South Pole, but the photo above of the IceCube Lab still presents a very wintry scene, all frosted over under a starry sky. The IceCube detector was rather quiet last week, but there was plenty going on at the station. Last week’s firefighting training involved […]
Last week concluded the 2nd ThaisCube workshop held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, a program that developed from a partnership between Chiang Mai University (CMU) in Thailand, the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT), and the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The workshop brought together IceCube researchers, Thai scientists, and aspiring young students. Held on August 8-11, […]
Time flies—they’re starting to talk about the Sun’s reappearance at the Pole. Below is a photo from last week that serves as a preview of what’s to come—but it was a long exposure photo so it appears much brighter in the image than it actually was. They were still enjoying auroras last week though, as […]
When a star dies, it succumbs to gravitational forces, collapsing into a tiny star made of densely packed neutrons or even forming a black hole that swallows everything up. As matter continues to fall into the star’s core, matter bouncing back triggers what are called core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe). Shortly after most collapses, a new and […]
The moon was bright at the Pole last week. And it sufficiently illuminated IceCube’s winterovers Marc and Hrvoje as they “relaxed” on a snowdrift in front of the IceCube Lab (ICL). They were paged for a power issue but were also busy in general last week with routine maintenance. Below is an inside view of […]
Last week marked the end of the 38th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC), the largest conference in the world for cosmic ray physics. The weeklong conference was held July 26-August 3 at Nagoya University in Nagoya, Japan. ICRC 2023 was the largest ICRC in history, with a record number of 1,406 participants (1,102 onsite and […]
The theme for last week at the Pole was “tall.” IceCube winterover Marc captured a nice photograph of the moon shining brightly through some striated clouds, with the ARO tower shown front and center. ARO stands for Atmospheric Research Observatory, which is located in the Clean Air Sector at the South Pole. In the summer […]
For such a remote, isolated location, the South Pole tends to have a lot of activity most weeks. Last week, IceCube’s winterovers were treated to a middle-of-the-night (!) page for issues on a couple of DOMs, but power cycling resolved things so at least they were able to get back to sleep pretty quickly. The […]