Let the games begin! South Pole’s version of the Olympics—the “Polympics”—has several years under its belt by now. The opening ceremony to kick off this year’s event was held last week with much fanfare. Station participants were grouped into six “countries,” which were introduced with their own custom flags and national anthems. IceCube winterover Connor […]
Jim Madsen, interim director of the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and associate director for education and outreach for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, recently announced that he was retiring after 25 years with IceCube and its predecessor AMANDA. His last day in the office was August 2. “With a […]
The atmosphere at the Pole was a bit more relaxed last week. Like other people all over the world, many at the station were enjoying watching the Summer Olympics in Paris. The South Pole station traditionally holds their own “Polympics”—still to come, planning is underway. The skies were nice last week. Below, a group is […]
Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are leading candidates for the sources of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos—tiny, nearly massless particles—detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. This is demonstrated by the real-time multimessenger detection of the blazar TXS 0506+056 and recent evidence of neutrino emission from NGC 1068 from a separate time-averaged study. However, the […]
It was back-to-back celebrations last week at the South Pole. First up was Christmas in July, a tradition observed at the Pole as well as at other places around the globe, especially in the Southern Hemisphere where the winter climate is in July rather than December. The winterovers put up seasonal decorations and lights, enjoyed […]
Last week’s continued good weather brought many of the South Pole’s winterovers outdoors to take photos of the skies. IceCube winterover Connor made a two-hour time-lapse video of the sky above the IceCube Lab (ICL), from which the image above, with bright star trails, and the image below, with the Milky Way showing more clearly, […]
Last week was a relatively quiet one at the Pole, indoors and outdoors. After a long stretch of high winds and low visibility, they finally found themselves with clear skies. The auroras seemed ever present, and there were wonderful views of the Milky Way as well. Besides some monthly maintenance tasks and work on the […]
This group is all smiles, so it looks like they survived their 14-hour journey following Frodo and Sam from the Shire to Mount Doom. Well, “follow” in this case means doing cardio for the duration of the movies’ combined run times. This was their “Walk to Mordor,” which was preceded a while back by a […]
The window of good weather that IceCube’s winterovers were waiting for arrived, so last week saw the installation of the IceAct telescope. Half a dozen station members came out to assist the winterovers in the operation. There’s lots of helping out at the South Pole, especially with the small crew during the winter. They still […]
When cosmic rays crash into the Earth’s atmosphere, air showers containing atmospheric muons and neutrinos are produced that rain down on Earth. During their journey, atmospheric neutrinos can morph or “oscillate” between three different flavors: electron, muon, and tau. These neutrinos can interact weakly with other particles and, thus, are still observable by detectors such […]