Story et. al.

WAHOOOO!!!!

My first paper has been submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters, and published on the arXiv! This is the paper that I described a few blog posts back. You all can now read the paper itself:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.2189

I think it is a good paper, and I am very excited to have been able to bring it from observations to publication in less that 25 days. For our field, that is quite quick! This has been a great experience and certainly made my stay at Pole interesting and productive!

Twiddling thumbs at McMurdo

Pegasus airfield, looking out at Mt Terror

I now see why people from the Pole don't like McMurdo. It is not that the McMurdo station is a bad place. You can actually go on hikes, there is a nice gym, and a lot of social activities going on. 24-hour internet access is nice. They have a homey coffee bar.

The reason Pole people don't like McMurdo is the reason I don't like McMurdo right now - I don't want to be here! We were supposed to have a straight-through flight yesterday, flying from Pole to McMurdo, then on to Christchurch in the same day. Even though the weather an McMurdo was pretty nice, they cancelled the flight to NZ. Today the weather was pretty bad here, but they still managed to get one flight in. Unfortunately it wasn't my flight, so some people got out but not us. The weather tomorrow is pretty iffy, so I might be stuck here over the weekend.

Trying desperately to look on the bright side, we saw 6 emperor penguins from the windows of the bus yesterday on the way back from the air strip. Man, I don't know how those things survive! They were a few miles from any open water, way out in the middle of the Ross ice shelf. We also saw quite a few seals lying out on the ice, just hanging out.

To pass the time, Ross and I went on a hike today. We walked up Observation point, a 400 ft climb to start. It was super windy, I'm guessing 30-40 mph winds, with gusts over 50. Pushes you around quite a bit. Also pretty cold, when the temps are (guessing) in the low teens to start with. From the top of Observation Point we descended towards the Kiwi station, Scott Base, then worked our way around the point back to the station. Took about 2 hours. I was quite cold by the end, even though I was wearing my Big Red jacked - fully insullated thigh-length down jacket. Hot chocolate in the galley was much appreciated after the hike.

Blowing snow below Observation Point, McMurdo

Nearing the completion of our hike.

**Update from Feb 12**

Last night Ross and I found the climbing gym. It is in the corner of the regular gym, and is a 15 foot wide by 20 foot toll wall. You have to put on harnesses and belay, but it isn't too bad. I think I still prefer the severly overhanging bouldering cave of the Pole - better strength and endurance training. But there were two people at the wall, and Ross and I climbed for 2 hours. Great way to pass the evening!

Today the weather looks beautiful, so I am hopeful that we will make it to New Zealand. Then I can disappear into the wilds. Looking forward to that very much!!

Leaving Pole

The ceremonial pole on a nice day.

The windchill is -52 F. I can see about 100 meters. I'm supposed to leave the South Pole today. Hmmm…

My trip to the bottom of the world is quickly wrapping up for this season. It is possible that my stay will be extended for a few more days, given that this weather is abysmal. If the visibility is too bad then the planes cannot land. So we are all crossing our fingers that we can get out today.

Reflections of Keith in the Ceremonial Pole.

In the mean-time, I'll give you an update on my last week at Pole. First, my paper is still not submitted. But it is very, very close. We are hoping that it gets submitted today. A great thing about having a large, active group is that you get lost of comments and critiques on the paper. A downside is that the comments don't stop. However, the result is a very good paper. I am extremely privileged to have the opportunity to work with this group of world-class scientists. We sent a draft to a few people on the Planck collaboration, given that we are following up clusters of galaxies that they discovered. They had a few comments, but nothing major. Unfortunately, because I have such limited internet access I won't get to submit the paper myself. None-the-less, my extremely competent colleagues in Chicago are submitting for me.

Enough about work, lets talk about the SPT party! We had the party saturday night out at the telescope, as I described in my previous blog post. The party went off well, though it was pretty casual. We arranged snowmobile shuttles to get people across the 1-km gap from the main station to the telescope, but that distance was still enough to deter many people. In the end about 30 people showed up. We had a good amount of wine, some beer, and plenty of cheesy music.

Getting ready to for the party.

I made a funny observation at this party. Guys are reluctant to dance if there are no girls. However, girls have no problem flooding the floor with estrogen. I'm not sure exactly what it is, whether all men are overly homophobic whereas women are not. Perhaps if we have nobody to impress, we don't feel like shaking it. In any case, we didn't get any ladies on the dance floor until the very end of the night, but we fit a bit of silly dancing in late in the evening.

The winterovers for SPT have arrived, as well as most of the winterovers for the station. There is a very different dynamic among the winterovers than among the summer workers. Many of them have wintered before and know exactly what they are getting into. They generally can't wait until all of the rest of us leave, so they can settle into their routine. Man, I am glad I am not staying for the winter! Time to go home! Or to New Zealand at least.

The classic South Pole shot. The marker to my left is the geographic south pole.

Tuesday night was the annual Super Bowl viewing. They have someone film it at McMurdo, then put on a big party here at Pole. They roasted a whole pig and cooked up quesadillas, mozzarella sticks and jalapeno poppers. Since it was recorded, we could skip all of the ads, so the viewing went much quicker than usual. Fine with me! I was rooting for the Broncos.

Well looks like they are going to try to land, but we will have to spend the night at McMurdo. I'm going to sign off - stay posted for updates from my travels in New Zealand!

lookin for a place to party

More photos that don't fit the blog entry, but are cool. Full 2-pi panorama of the South Pole.

"It's friday night, and we're hanging out, looking for a place to party…"

Well, it is friday night, and we are getting ready to make our place a party for tomorrow. It's going to be the "Cheese and Cheese Party" with the SPT team! Wine, cheese, and lots of cheesy music - should be awesome! So we are hanging out in the Science room, looking through Gigs and Gigs of cheesy music. My esteemed colleagues are drinking Corona, and I'm drinking root beer… Good times.

"I'm the operator of my pocket calculator..."

It's a good change from the week. My brain is fried from writing on my paper (see earlier blog); I've read those 5 pages so many times I don't read any more - I scan the words and my sub-conscious fills in what it thinks is there. The paper is coming along very well - we agreed to submit it early next week. But cheesy music is just the break that I need.

"Very Superstitious… writing on the wall"

Man, I've missed reporting some good times on this blog! Last weekend was the South Pole International Film Festival, or SPIFF for short. Short, home-made films by people here at pole. One standout film was a pseudo-western filmed by my friend on the BICEP2 project. He found "a Device" and a bunch of people (firefighters) hunted him down. He survived and never found out what the Device was. All in 7 min! The other exceptional film was a slideshow of compiled photos of the old South Pole Station. It was buried under the snow, and every winter people would go out and climb down into the labyrinth buildings. Many people in the audience had been to old pole, despite it being explicitly not allowed. Last year, those in charge decided that it was too dangerous, and they dynamited the whole thing. People in the audience who had been there were visibly moved, and very bitter about that whole situation.

"Cups and cakes, cups and cakes, Oh what fine things mother makes..."

After the film festival, we all piled on our coats (remember, it's -25 deg F outside) and headed out to Summer Camp. There they had set up a stage for a rock band. We danced the night away to three different bands of Polies playing classic rock. The first band was a trio with my friend playing lead guitar. Man, he was smokin' good! Really good rock and blues guitar player. Then a classic rock band, followed by a Grateful Dead cover band.

" Hey, I'm feeling glad. I've sunshine in a bag. I'm useless, not for long. The future, it's coming on"

It was the usual Pole party - most people mildly drunk, a few very drunk, everyone having a good time blowing off the week. The 15% girl population could get as much attention as they wanted from the 85% guy portion of the population. This leads to great people watching - and mocking - with (and of) my friends. My meringue dancing skills came in handy, and I got to make a fool of myself on the dance floor. I talked to one guy who turned out to be from Missoula, MT. He apparently makes "swords for the apocalypse" or something? He told me I could come up and visit, and we would drink whisky and play with swords all night. Hmm, think I'll pass... It is absolutely hilarious watching people try to dance in insulated carhardt overalls and heavy insulated boots. About all people dressed like this can do is rock back and forth and hop up and down. We hung out until 3am.

"I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok, I sleep all night and I work all day "

"Caught by the fuzz, when I was, still on the buzz"

Last week I needed a break from writing the paper, and went out to play a round of frisbee-golf. No matter that it was super windy. I was doing awesome, and still on par by hole 7. Problem was that was all down-wind. Things went downhill real fast when the course turned around and I started going back up wind. Ended up +13: ouch!

"Everybody, needs somebody, Everybody, needs somebody - somebody to love"

"Stand in the place where you were, now face the place where you live. If you are confused, check with the sun. "

Well, that's it for now. I'm going to go back to my root-beer and cheese - music that is. Till next time.