This summer season, IceCube sent more than 30 people from 12 institutions to the Pole to work on a variety of tasks to maintain and upgrade the observatory. Despite a number of delays, the IceCube team got a lot done in a short amount of time. […]
After the South Pole station closes for the winter, the remaining winter crew has a few short weeks to take care of any outdoor business before the sun sets and leaves them in darkness for months. […]
A few aircraft stopped at the South Pole last week for refueling. The plane here is a Basler BT-67, flying for the Australian Antarctic Program. […]
So that’s it—the station has officially closed, leaving 42 individuals at the Pole to take care of business during the winter months. […]
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are some of the most enigmatic phenomena in the universe. These millisecond-long pulses of radio waves most likely originate outside of our galaxy, but we don’t know much more than that. The IceCube Collaboration recently looked for neutrino events that coincided with 28 nonrepeating FRBs and one repeating FRB. Searching for neutrinos emitted from the same part of the sky as FRBs could provide clues to help test models that suggest particle acceleration near the FRB source. Results from this search are outlined in a paper published today in The Astrophysical Journal. […]
Since the sun will soon be gone for quite a long stretch, you might as well try to get as much of it while you can. Last week, IceCube winterover Yuya did just that with his camera, capturing a nice time-lapse of the sun around midnight that made a little “smile” in the sky. […]
The last of IceCube’s summer crew have departed from the South Pole, leaving IceCube winterovers John and Yuya on their own. They are well trained and ready for their adventure. […]
Katherine Rawlins, a University of Alaska Anchorage physics professor and IceCube collaborator, is spending her sabbatical year flying around the continental United States in her own Cessna 172 airplane. It turns out that IceCube played a role in helping Rawlins achieve her dream of flight. […]
In a paper recently submitted to Physical Review Letters, the IceCube Collaboration presents new results of an analysis to determine and characterize, with unprecedented precision and across the entire sky, the combined flux of astrophysical electron and tau neutrinos. […]
For South Pole experiments like the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, all instruments—whether in the ice or on the surface—must undergo feasibility studies to make sure they can operate in the harsh Antarctic conditions. Optical instruments, especially, are subject to icing and snow accumulation. Recently, the IceCube Collaboration proved the successful operation of a new instrument, an imaging air-Cherenkov telescope, at the Pole. They outline the details of the study in a paper published today in the Journal of Instrumentation. […]