Food delivery

As I think I've mentioned before, part of my job as a Materialsperson at South Pole for the winter is the weekly food pull for the galley. We usually end up with three or four carts such as these:

And when luck and weather is on our side, one of us climbs the 92 stairs of the "beer can" stairwell up to the station to receive the carts and roll them into the station to the waiting galley staff while the other two of us stay at the bottom get the carts into the beer can elevator.

However, when temps outside are below -85F, the temperature in the beer can is almost as low and the elevator can't be safely run. So when that happens, we make a call for all hands on station to position themselves all the way up the stairwell and we daisy-chain all the food up the stairs. This happened in May when we had that streak of -100 weather and it was quite a sight to have nearly the entire, 48- person winter crew in the beer can at the same time, steaming up the air with our breath. It's pretty great, though: the whole operation takes less than 20 minutes and since everyone likes to eat, they tend to show up to help!

Weekly snapshot #33

Chilly but lovely day...when I went outside to walk down to work this morning, there was a bright green aurora stretching from one horizon all the way across the sky to the opposite horizon. So beautiful, and the wind (though it picked up throughout the morning) so mild that I stopped and laid down in the snow to watch the sky for a couple of minutes.

AND you get something to look at in the snapshot. The moon rose today! As if it wasn't already beautiful enough.

Auroras

So, sadly but truly (and especially ever since I accidentally threw it on the ground and messed up the viewing screen) my point-and-shoot camera doesn't seem to be able to capture auroras. Which is why I haven't been posting pictures of them, even though few good visibility days go by without them gracing the sky during at least one of my daily outside walks.

For the first few weeks after it started getting dark, I was pretty disappointed by the auroras. It became obvious that they aren't nearly as crisp or brightly colored to the naked eye as they are in so many of the photos I've seen. And at first they were just smoke-colored streaks in the sky, and I was worried that was all there was to it and that the real glory is to be seen through the camera lens, which--thanks to various exposure options--can see colors the human eye can't.

But as the season has gone on, the auroras have gotten better and better to the point that it really is breathtaking when I happen to walk out there to find the whole sky filled with bright green dancing around everywhere. Such a privilege.

All the same, the people here with really good cameras--especially those who have devised warming boxes and have tripods and can set up their cameras outside and leave them in place for nice long exposures--have been getting AMAZING photos that are definitely more spectacular than the eye can see, unless you give extra points for actually being out in the cold and having the experience of seeing them with your own eyes (which I do!).

Here is one such photo, thanks to Hans Boenish.

And then here are a couple more, photo credit Max Peters:

Weekly snapshot #32

Howdy, there. It's pretty chilly at the South Pole at the moment, but the wind is very low and consequently it's actually quite a lovely day for an outside stroll.

Couple stars visible in the snapshot, though the very faint auroras glowing over the telescopes are unfortunately not visible here. Sorry! Hopefully something more interesting next week...???

International Jazz Day, 90 Degrees South-style

A bunch of the musicians on station (i.e., not me) got together and submitted a video of "Summertime" being performed down here, partly to a montage of snow-covered summertime activities happening at Pole. I spent a few hours with these talented folks one Sunday in April, being one of the camera people--great fun!

You can check out the results on any or all of these websites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uN6dUo3a18:

http://jazzday.com/videos/

https://www.facebook.com/intljazzday/videos/980377875350258/?fallback=1

Enjoy!