South Pole
Diary January 27th
From
Michael Burton.....
Well
the past who knows how many hours have been dominated for
me by calibration measurements. The IRPS is sitting out on
the bench in the lab, just longing to be placed outside in
the pristine air, yet there are all these boring calibrations
measurements to make. To find what position corresponds to
what wavelength, how much signal at each wavelength and aperture
corresponds to how much flux, how linear is the detector,
etc etc. Not exciting stuff, but essential to doing good science.
I devised a substantial series of tests to do, and then Michael
Ashley came up with a whole lot more! The jobs taking much
longer than I would like but I hope to be finishing in the
near future! The most important thing to do is find a tub
of water and keep it at a constant temperature while the IRPS
does its stuff and measures the IR flux coming from it. I
tried to make the process more interesting by specifying the
need for 12 year old malt whisky for the job, being particularly
suitable as the calibrating agent on account of its constitution,
but somehow I couldn't persuade the station staff to make
such a source available!
My
body clock is really working strangely now; I seem to be getting
about 3 hours later each day as far as my body rhythms go.
For instance I got up at 6pm yesterday, had breakfast at dinner,
lunch at `midrats' and dinner at brekky! Since it was Australia
day, Craig and I paid a visit to the South Pole store to collect
a few crates of beer to share around. Shopping at the store
is like going back in a time warp, or visiting a shop in India.
The store only opens for an hour 3 times a week. Four people
are there to serve you, but they can only deal with one person
at a time. You have to place your order with one, have it
written on a chitty by another, who gives it to a third to
use a PC to enter it into an inventory catalogue, scanning
each postcard and stamp individually! If you are purchasing
beverages the chitty comes back, and you wait around for the
`all clear' announcement when you then can visit the `fridge'
where the alcohol is stored and pick up you order. With waiting
in line, the whole process can take an hour!
So
the evening was passed guzzling cans, and telling all who
passed about Governor Philip and the convicts, but at midnight
I had to stop to head out to work, where I now am some 10
hours later. I have just completed another major accomplishment,
photographing a `shadow circle', showing the circle a shadow
makes over the 24 hours of daylight at the Pole. The whole
process has taken several days to complete, with my having
to contend with weather and unsocial hours. My last picture,
of a series of 8 taken at 3 hour intervals, was for 9am in
the morning, a difficult time for me as I always seem to find
myself in bed then!
 Craig
continues to gather data at a great rate with MIRAS. In fact
a group of three scientists from NASA Goddard contemplated
defecting to Craig's experiment today! They have been charged
with the task of getting both a mid-infrared telescope and
camera ready for wintering over (which they call SPIRAC, not
to be confused with SPIREX, the near-infrared telescope that's
here), and are still waiting for some of their team to arrive
with vital bits (such as the mid-IR camera!). Since they have
just got their telescope working, and Craig has a working
mid-infrared camera, there are some interesting possibilities.....
My
skiing continues to improve - I didn't fall over at all going
down the ramp to the dome yesterday, and I even managed to
skate out to the MAPO building to go to work. Give me a few
months here and I might make the Oz cross-country ski team!
Finally
I have learnt that Jack Doolittle is expecting to share the
same desk that I have all the parts of the IRPS covering...........
Michael
Burton
 
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