Week 19 at the Pole

Auroras overhead and bright moon peeking over top of South Pole station.
Marc Jacquart, IceCube/NSF

The main activity occupying IceCube’s winterovers last week was running DOM calibration on all of IceCube’s in-ice modules, a big effort compared to their usual task of calibrating just the IceTop DOMs. Besides other work on the detector, they also had emergency response training and put in some time helping deep clean the galley chairs (sounds fun). As the darkness has increased over the past weeks, visibility issues with the flag line out to the IceCube Lab were becoming apparent, and we know how important those flag lines are to the winterovers. So Marc installed reflective tape on all the flags, making the whole line more easily visible under the light of headlamps.

Looking upward into dark starry sky with lines of auroras fanning outward from center view.
Hrvoje Dujmovic, IceCube/NSF
Person in shadow in dark scene lit only by red headlamp, showing some flags lit up.
Marc Jacquart, IceCube/NSF
Reflective tops of flag line seen extending into distance under red headlamp light, also with moonlight coming from the side.
Marc Jacquart, IceCube/NSF