Last week at the Pole they had Christmas in July. Since the seasons in the Southern Hemisphere are the reverse of the Northern Hemisphere, many southern locales celebrate in July or August so that they can have a wintry feel to their festivities. The South Pole station had a tree, presents, and plenty of sweets on hand for theirs. […]
The IceCube Collaboration has a strong presence at the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2015) with over 50 presentations and posters. ICRC started on July 30 and runs through August 6 in The Hague, Netherlands. […]
The Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network (AMON) will link existing and future high-energy astrophysical observatories into a single virtual system, enabling near real-time coincidence searches for multimessenger astrophysical transients and their electromagnetic counterparts and providing alerts to follow-up observatories. […]
You might not know you’re at the South Pole from the photo of this watermelon. But there it is, growing in the greenhouse at the station, only a little bigger than a tennis ball at the moment. With it’s supportive, handmade hammock, hopefully it will reach a nice size and ripeness for the crew to enjoy. […]
It’s dark at the Pole, and even a headlamp’s light only goes so far. Paths to outlying buildings are lined with flags before winter arrives, when there’s still sufficient light for the installation. On a moonless winter night, though, there’s no question that the flag line has a value much greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a real lifesaver. […]
They’re watching something—but what? This is the communications (or “Comms”) office at the South Pole station. Not normally the site for recreational activities, but last week it played host to participants in an international darts tournament among the Antarctic stations. […]
The IceCube Collaboration is now revisiting these results in a combined analysis accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. The analysis is based on the results of six individual studies and uses up to three observables—energy, zenith angle and event topology—to derive improved constraints on the energy spectrum and the composition of neutrino flavors of the astrophysical neutrino flux. […]
Jakob van Santen, a former graduate student working on IceCube at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) and currently a postdoc at DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) in Zeuthen, and Juan Pablo Yáñez, also working on IceCube at DESY in Zeuthen, were recently awarded a Dissertation Prize from the Global Neutrino Network. This is the first year that the GNN Dissertation Prize has been awarded. It recognizes young postdoctoral candidates who have written an outstanding thesis and contributed significantly to their projects. […]
Ah, the 4th of July—barbecues everywhere, even at the South Pole. But, not only is it winter there now, with snow and ice, it’s been extremely cold lately, with long stretches of low temperatures, down to below –100 °F. […]
IceCube winterover Erik Beiser was captured in the above image silhouetted by the rising moon while out taking aurora photos himself. […]