Last week at the Pole was a quiet one for the IceCube detector. The IceCube winterovers, on the other hand, kept busy with various activities. They continued their inventories at the IceCube Lab (ICL). That’s Moreno above, decked out in his cold weather gear. The walk from the station to the ICL is about a […]
It’s finally getting dark at the Pole. Last week, IceCube winterovers went out to the IceCube Lab to do some inventory and check on the wind turbine on the roof. While there, they also covered up the windows to prevent light pollution during the dark winter. They are in the Dark Sector after all. But […]
Last week at the Pole brought claims of auroras in the skies overhead. No photos to go with those claims—not yet anyway, but those will surely come in the days ahead. In the meantime, the clear sky (without auroras) was beautiful in its even and gradual gradation from blue to orange along the horizon. And […]
Ahh…twilight—that magical time when our surroundings seem to soften under the diminishing light of day. At the South Pole, twilight is a lengthy process that can take weeks, with the distant horizon still lit by the slowly setting sun. They’ll begin to see a few stars, and maybe some auroras, before full darkness envelopes the […]
As with the previous week, last week’s weather at the Pole was a little cloudy, not the best for getting good glimpses of the one-and-only sunset (it will be a while before they see the sun again). Fortunately, there were a few moments when the skies cleared, and most of the crew took the opportunity […]
Long shadows are getting even longer. The sun hasn’t quite set completely at the Pole, but it’s very close. The weather last week was rather cloudy and windy. If it continues like that next week, the skies might be uncooperative for getting nice sunset photos. In the meantime, the images here were captured in a […]
IceCube’s winterovers started off last week with continued detector troubleshooting from the previous week. Later in the week, they joined a South Pole webcast and gave an outreach presentation on their experience as winterovers. They also took advantage of being outdoors for some emergency response training to trek out to the IceCube Lab and get […]
The search for the sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is not a simple one. UHECRs, which are a mixture of protons and heavy nuclei, are the highest energy particles ever measured. They should produce “hotspots” of high-energy neutrinos if they interact with other particles near their point of origin. Six years ago, a first […]
Last week was somewhat busy at the South Pole for IceCube’s winterovers. There were a couple of troubleshooting issues regarding the detector, and a trip or two out to the IceCube Lab (ICL). That’s Moreno below checking the status of some fans on computers in the ICL. On the recreational side of things, the winterovers […]
Every six minutes, a neutrino flies through the Antarctic ice sheet, and close to an IceCube sensor—also called a DOM—it interacts with a molecule of ice and creates a tiny amount of light that triggers data-taking for an event in the IceCube neutrino detector. If this is a high-energy event, a beautiful track or a […]