South Pole
Diary January 31th, 7:30am
From
Michael Burton.....
 Its
getting towards end of season now at Pole, and people are
starting to pull out. Not that it hasn't stopped some more
astronomers arriving to finish setting up SPIRAC, but slowly,
gradually, there seems to be more space in the MAPO building.
Though no word from our winter-overer, Chris Bero, in CHC
to see the dentist. This is starting to become a real worry
because a lot of us need to see him before we depart to tell
him how to run our experiments!
I'm
nearly done, and only really have a few small things to do,
as well as watching the experiment run itself for a few days
and see it can do so without intervention. This means I cant
really head out today, and the downside of this is it looks
like I'll be stranded in MacTown for about a week!
I'm
not looking forward to that, but it has to do with the boat
coming in, and all other work stopping. Not that I really
understand why - there is none of this manual unloading anymore,
just a few navy guys running around in trucks and forklifts.
I guess its another of these Antarctic `traditions' which
the navy brought in. In fact I'll probably hang around Pole
an extra couple of days as that is preferable to enduring
McMurdo food.
I
managed my radio interview with ABC Canberra yesterday. After
numerous email correspondence with Jeremy Lee, the programme
producer, regarding possible times and dates, we finally managed
the link up. To my surprise the reception was pretty good
- when I called my parents in the UK a few days ago I could
barely hear them. I expect the reception sounded suitably
distant, hopefully reflecting where I was for the listeners!
I'm
now back on a day schedule! Just like that. I was getting
so tired that I didn't manage to keep awake all last night
yesterday, but just had to go to bed. Only got about 4 hours
sleep, but it put me on a day schedule. Maybe I'll try and
stick to it now - it felt rather unusual having brekky at
breakfast time!
I
took yesterday morning off and went skiing. I did a grand
tour of the runway, which must be about 10 km in total. When
you reach the end of the runway, and the base is a small blur
seen through the murk of the surface inversion layer, and
you realise there is no sign of human presence for over 1000
km in front of you, you start to feel something of the immensity
of Antarctica. While it was pleasant skiing out with the breeze
at my back, coming back I started to get cold, and it certainly
makes you appreciate what the adventurers who ski here have
to endure when warmth isn't just a half hour ski ride away.
It also drives home the importance of wearing exactly the
right gear for the occasion - I was only slightly inadequately
dressed yet, and the cold inexorably crept up on me! For reasons
I couldn't fathom I'd run into odd flags and markers at various
places on my tour. Presumably the remains of some scientific
experiment in years past, but now just presenting an archaeological
mystery to the modern explorer!
I
now have the IRPS up on the roof and running apparently quite
happily. I constructed a giant container, which I call the
`Biggest Blue Board Box' (BBBB) to house the storage dewar
for the liquid nitrogen. The dewar doesn't like getting too
cold on the outside (despite holding liquid that is -200 on
the inside!) and likes to be pampered and kept warm. So we
have wrapped heating tape around it, and I constructed a box
our of blue Styrofoam (`blue-board' - hence the name), which
is nearly as tall as me. The BBBB is very much a heath-robinson-ish
kind of construction - all these pieces of Styrofoam glued
to together with silicon paste and bound with aluminium tape
and holes cut out for cable to pass through. I'm thinking
of offering it to the winter- overs as a `head' - certainly
better than the toilet facilities that ASA are deigning to
supply them!
I
managed to break the very last of the cables I had to connect
up to IRPS in the installation process! I guess I got pretty
cold on the roof yesterday - I had to spend a fair amount
of time up there dragging things around and connecting things
together, much of it in only light gloves, and needed to run
indoors frequently to thaw out. The IRPS is now rather a confusing
looking beast sitting on top of the MAPO building, and cables
hanging out of every orifice you can see. It had better work,
as there is no way Chris Bero is going to be able to work
out what's wrong if anything breaks!
Craig
has now taken his experiment down. Just 10 minutes after doing
so we had some `diamond dust', a phenomenon whereby tiny ice
crystals fill the air, reflecting sunlight off them as they
spin. Craig actually very much wanted to measure this phenomenon
as it's one of the negatives that hearsay says will affect
mid-infrared astronomy, but which no-one really knows for
sure. Unfortunately we missed it! Craig takes off on todays
flight and has been promised fast passage through McMurdo!
Me, I'm marooned for another week or so.
Michael
Burton
 
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