Last week brought two new IceCube winterovers (James Casey and Martin Wolf) to the South Pole, fresh and ready for action. Outgoing winterovers (Christian Krueger and Mack van Rossem) were still at the Pole, available to provide some welcome training before they leave the ice (which can feel as though it may never happen, with only 3 of 12 planned flights making it last week due to one issue or another—such is life at the South Pole). […]
Come summer, station personnel eagerly await the first provisions of “freshies,” as they’re called at the Pole. Despite continuing delays last week, a couple more planes have come and gone, leaving a few new faces along with the fresh fruit and bringing the station population to over 50. […]
This nice sun halo (properly called a 22º halo) that appeared directly above the IceCube Lab meant that there were ice crystals in the atmosphere, one of the reasons that the skiway wasn’t seeing enough action last week. Some folks were all packed up and ready to leave, but no plane was there to take them away as the flight schedule kept being pushed back due to weather. Such is life at the South Pole. […]
Last week at the Pole, the first two planes of the season arrived (and then departed again—both had short stays). They were small planes, but still, any plane landing at the Pole these days is an exciting event after the long, dark, quiet winter. […]
Although the South Pole is essentially a desert, a hefty accumulation of snow occurs on and around the buildings there each winter. How is that? Well, it’s the wind. Antarctica is a windy place—even with so little precipitation, it features some extraordinary blizzards thanks to strong winds. […]
IceCube’s collaborative efforts with gamma-ray, X-ray, and optical telescopes started long ago. Now, the IceCube, MAGIC and VERITAS collaborations present updates to their follow-up programs that will allow the gamma-ray community to collect data from specific sources during periods when IceCube detects a higher number of neutrinos. Details of the very high energy gamma-ray follow-up program have been submitted to the Journal of Instrumentation. […]
With the sun out, you can see again—and here we see all the flags surrounding the marker at the ceremonial pole. They didn’t just appear out of the darkness, though. They were recently replaced for the summer season after being taken down for the winter. […]
Flags serve an important purpose at the Pole, marking out routes between places for when visibility is poor. Here you can see the IceCube Lab (ICL) in focus behind a flag line in the foreground. […]
The IceCube Collaboration fall 2016 meeting ends today at Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz in Germany. Professors Sebastian Böser and Lutz Köpke hosted the weeklong meeting.
“It’s been a total thrill to see how fast we as a collaboration are moving forward on so many fronts in parallel,” says Sebastian Böser. “I hope everyone has enjoyed the meeting in Mainz as much as we’ve enjoyed hosting the collaboration.” […]
Up, up, and away. That’s a NOAA balloon launch shown in a time-lapse photo—pretty nice! Last week at the Pole was all about the camera. […]