Last night Jon realigned the MASS instrument on a couple of bright stars. This is a very impressive achievement, as even at midnight the sun is currently some 5 degrees above the horizon here. MASS, which stands rather unhelpfully for Multi-Aperture Scintillation Sensor, has produced the most exciting astronomical results to come out of Dome C so far, which we published in Nature earlier this year. We are very keen
to run MASS for a second year, to make sure that the exceptional image quality that MASS observed was not just the result of an unusual year.

Suze is now in great form and is working hard putting her experiment, Nigel, together. I do not know why a fibre-fed concave grating spectrometer with Peltier-cooled CCD should be called Nigel, but then again I cannot think of a good reason why it should not. Nigel will measure the brightness of the various auroral lines throughout the winter, results which should be of great interest to optical
astronomers.

Nigel requires a hole in the ceiling of the AASTINO to look through, and so we spent part of the day making an arrangement of short copper tubes that will protrude through the roof and keep the fibres warm - and therefore free of ice. Suze was kept busy filing the rough ends of the tubes, and now understands what was meant when she was told that every PhD student needs a good filing system.

Following a comprehensive instruction program, on site training course,plus rigorous written and practical tests, Suze is now qualified to drive the skidoo. OK, I made all that bit up. I explained to her the one key point about skidoo driving (don't roll it) and now she is as competent and qualified as the rest of us.

Following a call on the HF radio last night by Rita in the Radio Room, our Calcium Hydride has arrived from Terra Nova Bay. This is a remarkable testament to the skills of the Antarctic logistic folk, as the container is completely unlabelled as to contents, owner or destination. However, inside a plastic jar with a yellow lid is some bubble wrap and a second container, which claims to contain calcium
hydride - so I assume it's mine.

I assume that because as far as I know the UNSW group are the only folk to use this desiccant in Antarctica. It is a fabulously good desiccant, and can suck water out of things that didn't even know they contained water in the first place. Unfortunately it is classified as being not allowed on civil passenger aircraft, and so it is always a complicated problem to get it to where you want. This year we were particularly stymied because the cargo flights from Australia to Christchurch in
early November were full of race horses returning to New Zealand from the Melbourne Cup. This results in the cargo flight being reclassified as a passenger flight (because the trainers accompany the horses, which otherwise freak out); therefore no calcium hydride allowed. (Given the choice between sharing a flight with a herd of over-strung race horses capable of kicking their way through the side of a 747 in a matter of seconds, and 500 g of my favourite desiccant in a sealed plastic bag in
a sealed tin in a sealed plastic bag bubble-wrapped in a cardboard box, I know which I'd choose, but that's another matter.)

In the end Jon Everett, who takes care of logistics (and a million other things) back at UNSW achieved a minor miracle by purchasing some in Wellington, then flying it to Christchurch (because it's not allowed on the Cook Strait ferry either).

We've put a fan heater in the tent and now it's a very comfortable work space. After lunch the bulldozer driver came out and lifted our submillimetre instrument, SUMMIT, off the roof and into the tent. We'll work on SUMMIT for the next couple of days and then put it back on the roof.

SUMMIT works at very long infrared wavelengths (or very short radio wavelengths, depending on which side of the tracks you come from). For several years now it has operated in band that it is opaque at almost all other sites around the world. Only the highest and driest peaks in Chile offer an alternative to Antarctica. However, we've found that SUMMIT, which was originally designed for poorer sites, cannot
accurately measure the very good atmospheric transparency at Dome C, so we are modifying the instrument to operate in a band that no-one has ever yet been able to observe in.

SUMMIT will go back one the roof in a couple of days, ready to make the first ever measurements from Dome C at 200 microns (or 1.5THz, if you're one of them.)
- John