Tuesday
19th January
From
Michael Burton.....
A
bright sunny day at Pole, with the temperature creeping down
towards -30C and a notable absence of any wind. A pleasant
day for a stroll to the Dark Sector and back. Life continues
apace with CARA; there were 30 people at our biweekly meeting
last night working on 5 major projects and its getting a little
tight for space in the MAPO building. The arrival of a large
crate meant that you literally had to climb over the furniture
to access and work on delicate instruments like dewars, three
of which seem to be littering parts of the floor at the moment.
Abu
is still on the vacuum and pumping hard, and Al Fowler looks
worried, but its hard to judge whether this is just his usual
worry or whether its more serious (ie we have a vacuum leak
somewhere in the system). He plans to start cooling tomorrow
and the instrument will be placed on the telescope by Friday,
whether or not its really ready, as people cant stay here
for ever. We're also waiting for a replacement piezo to arrive
for our secondary mirror, which allows it to compensate for
any untoward motions of the telescope. This has to be here
by Thursday or we simply have to work without it. So its fingers
crossed for a few days.......
Daniel
still experiments with the Sodar, but its possible we aren't
getting any sensible data at all with it at the moment. A
Herc parked outside the Dome, a kilometre away, creates total
garbage in the system, and I expect passing Caterpillar Tractors
dont help. The South Pole is just too noisy a place! However
at least these distractions will be absent in winter, which
is when we want to gather our data. I guess microthermal flucuations
in the atmosphere 300m above our heads dont really rate when
competing with passing heavy machinery!
Matt
has decided to attack the Orbcomm transmitter, and bits of
wire and solder were littering the AASTO today. Even the communications
expert from COMMS was called in, and commented maybe we had
a dodgy transmitter (thanks!). So John, John and Matt have
been baffled by this wonder piece of technology. Andre, where
are you when we need you?!
I
thought my movie making abilities were secure given the good
weather, but a recent check of the webcam shows that it hung
up about 12 hours ago, and so I've missed once more the 24
hour shadow-circle we're trying to capture on film (thus updating,
ever so slightly, the original method Amundsen used to find
the Pole in the first place!). Following Matt's pioneering
efforts at Antarctic ice-running last week, I thought it time
to come of the treadmill in the gym and run the skiway too.
The skiway is about 100m wide and 5km along, just about big
enough for an errant Herc pilot to catch if dozing off after
a hard night at MacTown, and provides a hard surface to run
on. The snow is jus too crunchy off it, and a real effort
to trudge through, though its fine on skis. However the biggest
problem with running is what to wear. Its just too hot here
for the clothes your provided with, even though I removed
a couple of layers! After 30 min I was nicely toasting and
sweating profusely, which over the second half of the run
then started to turn to snow and ice on the outside and giving
me the appearnace of the abominable snowman. Next time I think
I'll stick to my shorts and T-shirt!
That's
all folks!
Michael
 
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