South Pole
Diary January 29th, 6am
From
Michael Burton.....
We've
been through a bit of a blow during the night, nothing normally
to write home about, but about as windy as I've felt it at
South Pole - around 15 knots (though Jamie keeps on insisting
that it reaches about 40 knots in winter, despite Met data
to the contrary!) - and at these temps (-35 now) that makes
it feel cold! Actually the weather has been much more changeable
than my previous trip; while it has been mostly beautiful
sunshine, low cloud can suddenly shoot in and the scene changes
completely inside an hour. Then an hour later we are back
to sunshine. The other day there were some spectacular visual
affects with sun dogs, and a light beam which circled all
the way around the the from the Sun - some kind of bizarre
refraction affect. However I missed it, alas, as I was sleeping
- the penalty of working nights!
The
IRPS is now on the roof and still appears to be working! I
spent several hours re-cabling to do the job, clambering over
all sorts of obstacles in the lab, trying to make our cables
relatively neat - it would be a real knot otherwise. I also
wanted to make sure I could get my cables out on the roof
before the access hole got clogged up with someone elses experiment
- a case of first in, best dressed! Now all that remains is
to get the nitrogen filling system up and going and I'm done.
Though I'm not sure whether I will now get to see Chris Bero,
our winter-over scientist. While on R&R in McMurdo he
had to visit the Navy dentist for the pre-winter check out
- and the dentist decided he should have his wisdom teeth
out! This means a trip back to Christchurch to visit a real
dentist (who almost certainly will think the teeth are OK!).
I guess this is one of the penalties of have the military
runs operations - everything goes by the book. Though NSF
are trying to cut back on their Navy reliance - next year
the McMurdo helicopter fleet will be run by a private contractor,
for instance.
Craig
has been messed up today - the SPIRAC boys (his competitors!)
have decided they need to run all their cables up where Craig
is, resulting in his having to dismantle his experiment for
their convenience. Then the tower that MIRAS is sitting on
rattles and shakes rather a lot as people run up and down
the stairs - in fact Craig has now posted some data on the
outside door showing what can happen to his readings when
someone slams the door too hard! I guess this is the penalty
for working in a lab where there about about 7 experiments
in progress.
I
gave the weekly science lecture tonight - held every Sunday
night. I decided to try and explain why all these crazy astronomers
keep coming to the Pole and what we really want to do. I had
lined up a nice collection of slides to accompany the talk,
to be told, 10 minutes before I was due to begin, that `technical
difficulties' would prevent me from showing any slides!
Jack
Doolittle, Mr. AGO, has been giving me all kinds of wise advice
about running AGOs (our AASTOs in our instance). Our AASTO
is indeed due to arrive in McMurdo any instance now, and I
am trying to make arrangements to get to see it. Jack tells
me they very carefully wrapped the AASTO in plastic to protect
it during its journey, and in particular to prevent the shipping
company from defacing it by putting their logos all over it.
Since AGO6 is still in Mactown (having not been deployed)
I will thus have two to see. And they both have the same access
code number!
Michael
Burton
 
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