Here is a picture of the 150 GHz map. It doesn't look like much yet, but this is only 3 scans of 2.5 hours each. The patch is 17 deg across and 10 deg high. If you click on the picture and look in the bottom right corner, you can see a small white spot which is "point source," which is probably a star:
Ok, I realize that we need fire alarms, sure. And I also realize that in order for fire alarms to work reliably, the system needs to be tested. But do you really need to test them every other day for a month?! A fire here would be a very, very bad thing - we can't exactly just go to another building if the main station burned down. There is a dedicated fire crew of 4 people here to ensure our safety. They have automatic announcements which I can recite to you by memory: "BBBEeeeeepppp!!!!! BBBEEeeeeepppp!!!!! May I please have your attention. May I please have your attention. There is a fire emergency in Cryo. There is a fire emergency in Cryo. Disregard, disregard, disregard." Well, the disregard part is not part of the alarm, but it might as well be, because in the approximately 50 times that I have heard that alarm, I think every one without exception has been followed by a "disregard." Today after dinner we were working, and at 7pm the fire alarm went off as part of a test. It continued to go off for 18 minutes without stopping, complete with flashing blue lights. It was loud enough that I went and got ear plugs!
As advertised in my blog title, we do indeed have a sauna at the station! Apparently they even had one in the old Dome before the new station was build. It is a small sauna, but if you have ever seen how many people you can pack into a phone booth... well you get the point. Sunday night we packed 7 people in there and cranked the heat. There is something called the "300 club," which is where people in the winter get the sauna up to 200 deg F, then run outside when it is -100 F. I am now a proud member of the "267 club." We got the sauna up to 240 deg F. This required some trickery because there is a safety switch on the bottom of the heater in the sauna that pops out and disables the heater if it gets too hot. Apparently they are worried about baking people alive or something... In any case, if you reach down there and pop it back in periodically, you can manually override the temperature control and keep the thing cranking! 240 is really hot - remember that water boils at 210 F. Then we ran outside and around the geographic south pole in the -27 F weather. Wearing shoes of course. The people who wore only sandals suffered, but I was great! Well, my hands got a little cold. Ok, fine by the time we went back in I was pretty cold... Oh yeah maybe rolling in the snow wasn't such a good idea either... The think that is super cool is that any exposed hair on your body almost instantly freezes and turns frosty white. We won't mention that my legs looked like an open meadow after a heavy frost. Needless to say, I slept very well that night!
Oh yeah, and on sunday Bob and Fred might have shown up again for a repeat attempt at the tow-in paragliding adventure with a stronger rope, accompanied by a dedicated photographer Joe on a second snow-mobile. Let's just imagine that everything worked really well this time, and Fred got up the full extent of the rope, probably 150 feet off the ground. But I'll leave it up to your imaginations - bug me when I get back to Chicago.
Here I am out in the open:
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