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. But you do know you’re at the South Pole when comments about the weather getting “warm and windy” are made about recent temperatures that reached around -40 °C (not exactly warm). Also at the Pole last week, there was some preventive maintenance on a generator and a continuing Antarctic darts tournament, in which the South Pole station beat McMurdo. The bottom image shows the front of the ARO building with its LIDAR beams reaching into the sky graced with a faint band of visible Milky Way and a rainbow-like aurora in the corner.
