What I may or may not have done on Sunday afternoon

The post about Friday became long, so I have started a new post for Saturday and Sunday. I know how short an attention span you TV-loving Americans have... (for Tom: that was a joke) Man, have you all watched normal TV recently? I can barely even watch it - they jump around to the point of distraction and I'm always waiting, and waiting, and waiting for them to get to a deeper punch-line when the program ends. Screw that, I'll go back to books!

Saturday saw me turning off my alarm, rolling over, and sleeping for 2 more hours. Oops. Oh well. I worked all afternoon trying to get some matlab functions to run, which analyze optical pointing data. We want to use several small optical telescopes mounted on the telescope to look at prominent stars to see where our telescope is actually pointing. Our final maps are accurate to around 5 arc-seconds. This means the following: The sky at the horizon can be divided up into 360 degrees around, each degree is divided up into 60 arc-minutes, and each arc-minute is divided up into 60 arc-seconds. As you increase the elevation the az measurement gets scaled by a cos(theta)... Why couldn't they have picked a coordinate system that was base 10? That would have been too easy. Just like switching to the metric system would be too easy in the long run... Moral of the story, we need to know where we are looking very exactly. And the optical pointing telescopes should help us do that, if they work properly.

After dinner, the whole group of us went on a tour of the berms given by John Carlstrom. The purpose of the tour was to look for large bolts that we needed for the telescope but were missing. We walked around for a while and looked through several tractor-trailer sized metal crates but didn't find the bolts. Then some people lured us into a building with the promise, "come on! We have beer!" It was the smoker's lounge. As much as I hate cigarette smoke, I like hanging out with smokers. They are the most un-pretentious people, and are usually just having a good time. That place certainly had character. Writing all over the walls, people playing Wi-golf, blasting music, good times.

After the others finished their beers, we left and headed over to the next party. This outdoor-indoor party had it all. The first thing to notice was the BBQ grille, where they had previously cooked braughtworsts and some beef-steak thing. Then there was the whiskey-shot bong. Someone had taken a cylindrical piece of ice 2 ft in diameter and 1 ft tall and hollowed out a 1-revolutoin spiral tube through the middle of the block. A plastic tube was attached to the exit, making for beer-bong style ice-cooled whiskey shots.

Pretty soon, out came a lady with a pinata designed like the old dome that had just been taken down, complete with rivets from the dome. It was attached to a rope that a guy could use to pull it up and down, and blind-foulded participants took turns whacking at it with an axe handle. It finally broke and candy was distributed. After a bit I went inside, and they had started playing music. A few people were dancing, and I can't not dance if there is a dance floor! So we busted some moves for the next several hours. Oh man was I over dressed!! Wearing expedition-weight long johns, insulated carhardt overalls and a long-john shirt made me one sweaty dancing fool. Fortunately the air is so dry that sweat evaporates almost instantly. It is hilarious watching people dance in the huge insulated boots. They just sort of clump around. I was wearing hiking boots, so things were better for me. I turned in at 11:30 - no worries about getting lost walking back in the dark!

This brings me to what I may or may not have done on Sunday afternoon. Sunday morning was brunch and more work and more work on the optical pointing software, which is working now. Sunday afternoon I was going to play ultimate frisbee, when two people who may or may not work on BICEP2 walked into the science lab with large packs. After a one sentence explanation, my frisbee plans were dropped in favor of a new project. I got fully dressed, and Bob and Fred (aliased names, of course) checked out a snow mobile. Fred drove with Bob on the back, and me in the sled being towed. We drove out to the BICEP - SPT building and found a spool of that cheep yellow nylon rope.

After we left the building, the OFFICIAL record gets a bit hazy. We might have driven grid-north out of the station approximately 2 miles, until we could only see the top of SPT and the steam from the main station. I might have taken over driving, though we can't really say because I haven't taken my snowmobile training (that will be tomorrow morning). It is possible that Fred had a paragliding setup in the enormous pack. Some have guessed that he put on a full-body harness and clipped on the ropes to the paragliding kite. I could have tied the yellow rope into the front of his harness with a Munter hitch on a bight so it could be released by just pulling the lose end, and Bob might have put the spool in the back of the snowmobile and tied another Munter hitch to a beefy quick-link on the back of the snowmobile. One could then imagine me inching the snowmobile out until the rope was tight, at which point Fred could have started running and lifted his parachute. If we got going fast enough, Fred could have started flying up as we towed him from the snowmobile, in which case Bob could have slowly let out rope so Fred could get higher and higher. If this were the case, then the Munter hitch would actually be too much friction, melting the rope, causing it to stick then break. The remedy for this would be to switch to simply two wraps around the quick-link. In such a scenario a party like this would make about 15 attempts, breaking the rope 4 times, and Fred would have made it up to 50 or 60 feet above the ground. This group would have decided to call it quits when Fred got too far to the side and almost tipped the snowmobile over sideways. Fortunately in this case a practical driver like myself would have let off the accelerator and Fred might gracefully glide down to the snow. We are not really sure what happened, but I came back to the BICEP building with Fred and Bob several hours after leaving, toes frozen cold, and a coil of broken yellow rope.

Good times man, good times.

Just greasin' the gears

It is Sunday, January 17, 9:41pm. I was trying to work, but Ken is moving the data around because he is messing with the raid arrays, and my programs can't find anything that they need. I give up. But fortunately for you, my dear reader, this gives me time to write a blog posting, which will go up tomorrow when the internet comes back.

Speaking of internet, on the information screens in the dining hall there is a daily quote posted. The other day the quote said something like, "The saddest thing I can think of is getting accustomed to luxury" - Charlie Chaplain. Well, apparently I had grown accustomed to the luxury of internet whenever I wanted it, served up on the silver platter of high bandwidth. Here at pole, on a good day we get internet in two 4 hour chunks during the day, which corresponds to when two satellites go overhead. Sometimes the blocks are broken up with small breaks in service. One satellite is slow, the other is glacial. Gmail works, but barely. Uploading pictures to this blog is VERY slow. And whenever the internet is up, I feel obligated to do work that requires the internet, so I don't take much recreational internet time.

Friday saw me climbing up onto the telescope deck to grease the elevation gears, the ones that lets the telescope look up and down. After the azimuth bearing started vomiting small pieces of metal last summer, we switched from azimuth scans to elevation scans. By "elevation scans" I mean that the telescope stays at a constant azimuth (points at the same place on the horizon) and scans up and down in elevation until the patch of sky that we are interested in rotates out of view due to earth's rotation. The reason for scanning back and forth is that we want to look at the same patch of sky for a very long time and it should always look the same, while the atmosphere and other foregrounds should change. This way we can get rid of foregrounds, leaving only the signal we are interested in - the CMB.

Greasing the elevation gears required two steps. First we had to scrape off most of the old grease with paint spatulas. The grease is very heavy, cold temperature grease. It is apparently really expensive, and it gets everywhere! It was very cold up on the deck scraping grease in the wind, and we had to go back into the observing cabin every 10 min or so to thaw our hands. We would scrape the visible gears, then rotate the telescope and scrape more gears that had become reachable. After the gears were mostly clear, we painted more grease right back on, using paint brushes. Man, that job is going to suck in the winter when it is -80 C!

We rushed back to the station to catch dinner, then headed out to take a picture with everyone at the station of the old dome. The new station that I have been staying in was completed in 2007 (CHECK). Before that, there was a large metal dome that had smaller heated sections inside of it, which served as the main station. By the time I got here, there were only a few pieces of the dome left. Now the dome is completely gone, and some people are sad. The new station is certainly much plusher than the old dome.

There are a number of people who come here to work every summer season. I get the impression that it is similar to seasonal workers for the Forest Service in MT. This leads to an interesting mixing of cultures: seasonal blue-collar workers and scientists. At the pole, these cultures seem to mix nicely without much conflict. I got the sense that at McMurdo it is not always as congenial, but that was just an impression. Some people have been coming here for years and years. I cleaned the bathroom with a guy who was not in that category - he looked like he had stepped straight out of Sturgis to the South Pole and was wearing a Harley Davidson tee-shirt, jeans, sunglasses (inside - we were cleaning the bathroom) and a black leather du-rag to compliment his grey hair and beard. He said, "Some people come down here because they just like it. Other people come here for reasons you will find out. I don't want to get caught up in all of that. It is nice to have a woman back home, you know?" He was a heavy machinery contractor from Colorado, around Durango. But indeed some people just like it. Dana is one of our two winter-overs, and this will be his fifth season. He said, "I like the dark. When the sun starts to come back up in early October, I say, 'Oh man!' " Stephan is the winter-over for BICEP2, and I know he wintered last year - he may have wintered over even before that. John Carlstrom is on his 15th season this year, and John Kovac, the de-facto lead on BICEP2, said that this is his 18th season.

Do you know what friday night at the pole is? Volleyball night! At 7:30pm after the picture, a crowd gathered in the gymnasium, and we put up the net. The gymnasium is almost exactly the size of a volleyball court. The games were mostly 6 on 6, with some subs at the beginning. It is a very congenial atmosphere, where you play hard without being too competitive. I was amused by a big german? guy who works on Ice Cube, the neutrino detector. He is a classic alpha-male character type - he liked to hit the ball really hard and always kept score, but wasn't actually very good. Fortunately kept himself under control and it was all just fun and games. After each game, we would say, "one more?" and ended up playing until after 10pm.

Ice cream!

Here is an email that I got from one of the logistics coordinators, and I had to share!

Hello South Pole,

As many of you will soon know, ice cream arrived this afternoon and will be available tomorrow for your consumption. First, let me share some information with you about this ice cream. It is from NZ and in limited quantity. You may ask "why is it in limited quantity?" excellent question; here comes the answer.

I purchased the ice cream bars, sorbet and popsicles one month ago because frosty boy was having serious issues and I wanted to give you something delicious while we waiting for the vessel to arrive with 660/3 gallon containers. (11 different flavors)

Remember one thing..the faster you eat the ice cream currently on station, the faster all 5,100 pieces will be gone. If everyone on station has two per day, we will be out in less than two weeks.

The key is to enjoy slowly so we can enjoy it longer,

[Name removed to protect the innocent]

Soccer and Pub Trivia

Ahhh, I am now settling back into my chair in my room, listening to "The Odessy" by Symphony X and writing of my first three full days at the bottom of the world. Let's get a few things straight right off the bat. A devorak keyboard setup rocks and you should all swithch over. Milk on tap is the most awesome thing ever. The Pope is Catholic. And the South Pole is cold. It has apparently been "very warm" according to the locals, with temperatures around -25 C. But it really doesn't feel that cold, first because you put on half a department store's worth of clothing, and second because it is so darn dry. If I don't cover my face with goggles and a neck gator it gets cold very quickly, but if I try to wear my full down coat on the walk to the telescope, I roast. Also, all of the scientists here works very hard. You pretty much eat, sleep, and work. As expected. And there are no penguines at the South Pole.

Ok, now that we have cleared some things up, I'll discuss my work a bit for those of you who are interested, then get on to the stories later. I am mostly here to get a feel for the telescope, see everything first hand, and maybe even be helpful sometimes. I am working on setting up the automatic processing software, which - you guessed it - automatically processes data from the telescope to make it easy to look and see if everything is working properly during the observation season. It should work immediately because it was used 2 years ago, but nothing works the first time so my employment is still ensured for the time being. Another major project that has occupied most of Carlstrom's time in the past few days is looking at fixing the azimuth bearing. This is the bearing that the entire telescope rotates on in a circle parallel to the ground - i.e. if you stay pointing at the horizon and turn in a circle, you would be turning in azimuth. This bearing started spitting out metal pieces a few months ago, which is VERY BAD. We have hired a company to design a way to jack up the entire telescope, remove the old bearing, and put in a new one. This will happen next year. But to get a sense of the magnitude of this project, the telescope above the bearing weighs 700,000 pounds. Yes, Seven Hundred Thousand pounds. Taking out the bearing will probably require cutting out the side of the building. The two guys who came down to look at the telescope and start making plans didn't seem phased, so that at least is good. I got to crawl around under the telescope on Tuesday looking at the foundation where they will jack from.

Yesterday I did software all day. Kind of a shame sitting inside all day in a location like this, but that was the work I needed to do. But there were guys working on the roof of the main station where I was working - not sure what they were doing exactly, but apparently it required a lot of violent banging. Whenever it became particularly ferocious, white crap from the ceiling would start raining down like snow, and we would all close our computers and go for a cookie break.

Today we needed to change some fans and change a hard-drive on the telescope. We docked the telescope to get access to the receiver. This is a pretty cool design; the telescope rotates down so the receiver sits ontop of the roof of the control building. Then all we have to do is open up doors in the roof and we can crawl directly into the receiver cavity, which is pre-heated by the warm air in the control building. I got to crawl around in there a bit and cause trouble.

Ok, STORY time. Tuesday after working all day in front of a computer and eating a steak dinner (the food is indeed pretty good), I felt the need for exercise. Remember that the South Pole is just over 9000 ft above sea level. And because we are so far south, the effective altitude is closer to 11000 ft. In the briefing sessions in McMurdo, they give you a scare talk to drink lots of water and recommend taking diamox, an altitude medicine. Anyway, there was a soccer game in the gym on the rec schedule, so I went. 3 on 3 indoor soccer. I launched into that game, and almost died in the first 3 minutes! Wow, I never realized how hard running at 11000 ft is! I guess that is because every other time I have been at altitude I have been in the mountains where you don't really run. I could start off sprinting, and after running the length of the court I would start seeing spots. I quickly learned to run sparingly. It was a fun game because we were all of a close ability, and the walls were in, so it became a lot like hockey. But oh man, by the time we had played for an hour, I was finished!

Soccer dovetailed nicely with the Pub Trivia event. There were 6 teams, and 4 rounds. In each round, the hosts would ask a series of questions and we would attempt to write down the answers on a piece of paper. Then we would switch papers with a nearby team, and correct them. The winning team of each round would get a 6-pack of beer. The event was $1 to enter, so all proceeds went to beer for the next trivia night. The first round was on money - curriency of India, how many dollar bills weighs a pound, how many dollars is an ounce of gold, etc. - and on names on NPR hosts. Unfortunately I could't remember anyone's name. Round 2 was on deserts. Oldest desert, percent of landmass covered by desert, the names of the planet and main characters in the movie Dune, etc. Thanks to Jared knowing the name of the co-star in Dune, we won that round! Given that there were only 4 people on our team, one was on dish duty and couldn't drink, and I don't drink beer, a 6-pack was pretty good for Jared and Dan! The third round was a series of 25 pictures. Each picture was from a movie, and you had to guess the movie. The catch was that in each picture, they had digitally removed everyone's faces - the clothes were "empty." Oh man, I was hopeless!! Jared did well, but was basically working by himself on that one. The last round was a set of 20 pop songs where you had to guess the artist and the name of the song. Again a trick - clips of the songs were all played backwards! I got Hotel California and The Distance by Cake, my proud contribution to the team. We ended up 3rd over all - not bad for the smallest team! Then back to work for a bit before bed.

The South Pole is probably one of the only places in the world where you can still stamp your own passport! I did exactly that, setting the date as my arrival date.

Today, after closing the telescope we made it back to dinner with 1 minute to spare. After dinner there was a lecture by Charles Bentley about when he came to Antarctica in 1957-1959 to do some climate science and mostly explore. They had to come in by boat because no airplanes had the range to make it. But the boats could only come in at the end of the season because of ice. So wintering over was mandatory. They spent the winter in these box-like buildings, then went out to explore the next summer. They actually found a mountain range that nobody knew existed before - the interior of Antarctica was simply largly unknown. Pretty interesting.

Thanks for your comments, and stay warm!

Arrival at the South Pole

Holy crap!!!! I am at the south pole!!! Holy crap!!! How can I convey to you, my dear reader, my excitement when I stepped off the plane and there was the South Pole Telescope, just a kilometer away? Well, hopefully you all know me well enough to how excited I get about the science I do. I have been working on projects at the South Pole for a year and a half, and have seen hundreds of pictures of the SPT, and then all of a sudden, THERE IT IS!!! I couldn't stop smiling and almost started jumping up and down right there on the snow runway.

But I am ahead of myself. This morning, we left McMurdo and boarded the airplane at 8am. The planes that they fly into the South Pole are military propeller planes with skis instead of wheels, C-130's. They hold around 30 people seated around the outside of the plane interior, and when we are dressed up in all of our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear, the quarters are quite tight. The ECW consists of the following: white Mickey Mouse boots, insulated Carhart overalls, massive down coats with huge, fir-lined hoods, gloves, hats, and goggles. In anything above 15 deg F you start sweating in a hurry just standing there! The flight took about 3 hours. There were some breath-taking views of the Antarctic interior. Just incredible vast expanses of snow and rock. The sky blends with the ground in a seamless cocoon of white and blue.

At the South Pole station I was met with many familiar faces - colleagues I have worked with on the BICEP2 experiment (which I worked on for my first year of graduate school) and my current coworkers on SPT. It is a funny feeling to step off of a plane in one of the most remote places in the world, and be immediately surrounded by people you know and buildings and structures you have dreamed of. My friend Justus who works on BICEP 2 and has taken me climbing in CA during my visits to Caltech to work on that project met me when I got off the plane. The first thing he said was, "did you bring your ice axes? Because there is a 20 ft ice face that we could climb if we had gear!" All my climbing stuff is in Christchurch, so I will try to get Chris Sheehy to bring it in when he comes in later in January. The landscape is completely flat snow in all directions. The sun circles around the sky, but always at virtually the same elevation in its slow regress towards the horizon where it will eventually set after this six month day.

After eating lunch, we immediately headed out to the telescope. The first thing I did when I got there was charge the outhouse because I had to go to the bathroom so bad I couldn't think. But then ... WOW! WOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!! They weren't kidding when they said that the primary mirror is 10 meters in diameter! The telescope is huge. The first time I was standing on top of the observation building watching the telescope turn and nod, I just started laughing hysterically with glee! The entire telescope can rotate at several degrees per second and can almost look like it is dancing. It is indescribable, just amazing. I still can't believe that I am here.

In addition to scientists, there were several media people and "Distinguished Guests" (DV's). The media people include Dan, a meteorologist for a tv station in Alabama that partners with CBS, Ann, a science writer for the Washington Monthly, a camera man from CBS, a science writer from the Wall-street Journal, a reporter from NPR and another science magazine, and perhaps a few others. The DV's were top people from the NSF, which is the organization that funds the whole Antarctica program along with the military. It is very important that the DV's have a good trip and return with favorable impressions, and they have certainly been treated as first-class citizens during the entire trip. Both groups were given tours of the science experiments including SPT, BICEP, and Ice Cube. I listened to Carlstrom give the tour three times in all. Even though I know most of what he said, it is always incredible to listen to John talk about his science. He has a crystal clear grasp of what the science is and how our experiment is achieves these goals. He explains his work concisely, clearly, and passionately. Without exception everyone on each of the three tours were visibly excited by the time John finished talking about dark energy, structure formation, and finding new galaxy clusters. I got excited, and I was hearing the exact same thing three times in a row! I came away with the realization that the experiment I work on, SPT, is the best instrument of its kind at virtually the best location on earth directed by one of the best scientists in the field right now. I know I have told many of you this, and I will say it again; there is nowhere I would rather be, nothing I would rather be doing right now than working as a graduate student on the SPT under John Carlstrom. If I were independently wealthy, I would be doing exactly what I am doing now - ok I might have a car to go climbing but ... I love it. I absolutely love it!

May you all be living out your dreams.

The Southern-Most Rugby Game in the World

[Written Sunday Jan 10]

The posters were everywhere - Mt Terror v.s. Scott's Base. Wait, rugby in Antarctica? Snow for a playing field? Team uniforms? Actual rugby goal posts? No problem mate - let's play!

But first, more penguins! This morning, there was a "penguin tour" Unfortunately by the time that I went to the board to sign up for it, the sign-up sheet was gone. So I just dressed anyway and went out to the meeting place just in case there was extra room. There was.

We drove back out on the road going to Pygasis airport about 20 min onto the ice shelf, and the 20 of us unloaded. A group of 4 emperor penguins was standing about 100 feet away. They were molting, and had apparently been there for 4 days without moving. What impressive animals - way out in the middle of the snow just standing. It was a stunning day with a blue sky and temperatures around -8 C.

After lunch, I piled into "Ivan the Terrabus" and drove out to the field. Sure enough, there was a full rugby field complete with goal posts and flags for the sidelines! Mt Terror was the US team and Scott's Base was the New Zealand team, and each had actual team uniforms - red, white and blue for the americans and black for the kiwis. The players all actually had cleats! The kiwi team looked just like the NZ national rugby team, the All Blacks, who are infamous in the world rugby circuit - apparently whenever they don't win it is a bit of an upset!

The fans lined up on both sides - many more American fans than kiwis, simply because the McMurdo (US) base is a lot larger than Scott's (NZ) base. there were large flat-bed trucks on each side to serve as bleachers, and a kiwi announcer talking through a speaker system. The national anthems were played, and and the teams lined up. But before the game began, the NZ team performed the Haka. The Haka is apparently a traditional Mauri dance, one form of which is performed to show that you have no fear going into battle. The All Blacks perform it to intimidate the other team before the game begins. And yes, it is terrifying! Go look for it on youtube.

Then the game began. It was a fun game and they all played pretty seriously. There were a few girls on each team, who whenever they got the ball or went for a tackle the crowd went wild. The first quarter went scoreless, then things went down hill for the good-ol' USA. We ended up losing 18 - 0. Ouch. But what a random, crazy experience! Pictures to follow.

----

McMurdo is a funny community. There are several hundred people living here, and many come back year after year. I was talking to a couple of women who are on their 12th season. It is a very community based atmosphere - much more than in the states. I guess this is because people need each other and if you seclude yourself you will probably go crazy. The age demographic is dominated by people in their late 20's or early 30's. There are significantly more blue-collar type workers than scientists at McMurdo; I will be curious to see if that changes at the pole. There are a surprisingly large number of recreational options - cross country skiing, easy snowboarding, hiking, a gym, yoga, a big screen (~100 inch) TV, and ... wait for it ... drum roll ... a climbing wall!! Unfortunately you have to get certified to use it or go with a group and talked to the guy who is in charge of it on the phone then emailed him later and he hasn't gotten back to me about times to go :(

The dining hall seems surreal - it feels just like a dining hall on a college campus. Various different food options and the ever-present cereal bar, and ENDLESS SUPPLY OF MILK, an ice cream machine. The food is quite good. My one complaint is not enough vegetables. Then again, I am in Antarctica, and veggies are expensive to ship here.

Antarctic landing

[Written regarding Friday, Jan 9]

Here is a photo taken from the airplane window of mountains in Antarctica on the way to McMurdo.

After three days of delays in NZ, we finally made it to Antarctica on Friday. As I mentioned in the previous post, I was out partying with kiwis and only got 3 hours of sleep, so the plan ride went fast because I was spacing out staring at the back of my eye-lids. As we got close, you could see vast expanses of snowy mountains poking above the all-encompasing ice. Just amazing!

We landed on the Ross Ice-shelf, and stepped out into Antarctica. Cold? No, not really; it was actually only -5 deg C and relatively calm. All of us were then loaded up into these bus things that are jacked way up to accommodate massive snow tires. It is called "Ivan."

McMurdo Station is what I imagine a mining town looking like. There are no plants growing at all and all of the buildings are mostly colorless. McMurdo is on the flank of an active volcano called Mt Erebus (~12448 ft), and the ground is all black or dark-brown volcanic rock. I hiked up Observation Point, a 500 ft hill on the edge of the town, and got a great view of McMurdo and the surrounding bay. The most noticeable thing the vast-ness; open expanses of white in all directions with some mountains.

Our flight to the South Pole was supposed to take off Saturday morning, however it was cancelled because a plane on the Wais Divide had run into mechanical issues and our plane was needed to fly in mechanics to fix that plane. I hiked Observation Point again with three other guys, and spent the afternoon catching up on email, creating this blog, and reading an SPT paper. I ate dinner with John Carlstrom (my adviser), went out to Scott's hut with him, then had a few glasses of wine before going to bed. Tom Crawford, a senior scientist on SPT back in Chicago had told me that the best way to get time to talk to John was to be in Antarctica with him. So true! I spent over 5 hours with him yesterday, and in Chicago I have to fight tooth-and-nail to get 15 minutes!

And the moment you have all been waiting for - PENGUINES! At Scott's hut there was a group of 7 or 8 penguins pretty close out on the ice. They were mostly just laying on their stomachs not moving much, but still very cool. I got a few pictures, but I need a zoom lens to get good photos. There was a seal swimming around there too, but apparently not the kind of seal that eats penguins. I'll post some photos when I can download them to my computer.