A year at the South Pole - 2017/18 A year at the South Pole - 2017/18 In May 2017, I accepted a job offer at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) in Madison - a job that sent me to the bottom of the Earth. IceCube is a giant Neutrino detector at the South Pole, and it was my job to keep its computers running. For an entire year (November 2017 to November 2018) I lived and worked at the Amundson-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica.

Being an IceCube "Winterover" has been my dream job for years - and I made the dream real. This page is my journal of this once-in-a-lifetime adventure. Most of the content is in English (sorry Mama!). The journal entries are sorted by date, earliest first. [Go to very last journal entry] Please remember that I created and own all the contents and photos on this blog (if not denoted otherwise), and that I put a lot of love and effort into it. Please don't just take or re-post stuff without my permission. If you are interested in a particular text or photo, feel free to contact me via email.

Official release of my Aurora Australis video! One and a half years after my great adventure, I am happy to finally announce the release of my Aurora Australis timelapse video! I've been showing an inofficial version of it at many events, and people have been asking about it a lot. Unfortunately, I never got the license for the music I chose so I wasn't able to publish it. But yeah, good things need time to ripen, and in April 2020 – thanks to my IceCube winterover successor Ben Eberhardt – I quite unexpectedly got in contact with professional timelapse photographer Martin Heck, who magically remastered my shots and added the perfect soundtrack by Michael Frankenberger! Now out for everyone to enjoy on Martin's mesmerizing Youtube channel: SOUTH POLE | Antarctic Silence Ben and Martin also did a video together – the first South Pole 24h winter timelapse in ultra high definition! Please check it out here: SOUTH POLE | ANTARCTICA 8K60



Left behind everything I knew

All the colors but bone-white and sky-blue

Hit the continent running

Engines were humming just to break through The Weepies

Arrival in Madison, WI

[prev] [next] [top] "Passengers BUSSE and WERTHEBACH, please report to the Delta personnel at gate A75!" The announcement echoes from the marble walls of the airport toilet. That's me!

I rush outside, where Johannes, my workmate for the upcoming 16 months, is waiting for me, already having grabbed our bags to follow the tinny instructions. It's not late at all, so what could they possibly want from us? Could they have mistaken the electronics kit in my luggage for a dangerous device? Am I being arrested??

"Congratulations, Ms. Busse, Mr. Werthebach. You have been upgraded to our Delta Business Class!" says the lady at the Delta desk to us, smiling over both ears. Phew. Not what I had expected. Well I call that a fabulous start to my dreamjob! View from my hotel room window. Pretty sweet isn't it? After having enjoyed the comforts of a nine-hour overbooked flight to the very fullest (including a bed, free socks, cocktails and a gourmet lunch), we set foot to the lobby area of Madison Wisconsin airport, slightly hungover. Our supervisor Ralf is waiting for us. Both Johannes and I have been here before, when we were being interviewed in April for the very job we will start tomorrow. So Ralf's baseball cap already looks quite familiar to us, which makes him easy to spot in the crowd. After grabbing some dinner in the "Great Dane", Ralf drops us off at our hotel. I am tired despite my ridiculously comfortable flight experience, so I drop into bed right away. The nightly glow of the State Capitol falls into my hotel room window, making sure everybody gets their well deserved slumber.

Ice Facts nō 1: South Pole seasons Antarctica is huge. Huge meaning, you could fit the entire continent of Europe into it, and still would have several Germany-sized areas to spare. The reason that many people are completely unfamiliar with Antarctica, is that the polar regions are usually heavily distorted in most representations, leaving Antarctica as a fuzzy white blob at the lower edge of the map. Here's what it actually looks like: Map of Antarctica The South Pole is located right in the middle of the Antarctic Plateau, surrounded by thousands of miles of icy desert. Most traffic to the South Pole is by aircraft, via transit in McMurdo Station at Ross Island. At the South Pole, life works a little differently than what most of us are used to. There only is one long day (the austral summer) in which the sun never sets, and one long night (the austral winter) in which it never rises. Most people at South Pole only work there in the summer. However, there are a handful of crazy people called winterovers, who stay at South Pole station all year long. This is a demanding and also dangerous job for many reasons. During the long Antarctic night, there is no way of leaving Pole (because the weather is too bad and too cold for planes to land). There is limited internet and, well, no sunlight. Every year, IceCube sends two winterovers who stay at Pole for 13 months. Their job is to keep the detector running at all time. Read an introduction to IceCube below!

Science Facts nō 1: The IceCube detector The IceCube South Pole Neutrino Observatory is a huge particle detector buried in the about 2500 m thick Antarctic ice sheet at the geographic South Pole. It has an instrumented detector volume of 1 km3 and weighs over a 100.000.000 tons. 5160 optical sensors, called "DOMs", attached to 86 long cables take data 24 every single day. IceCube is looking for ultra-high-energy neutrinos from outer space. Upon colliding with the molecules of the ice, the neutrinos produce secondary charged particles which then again generate a little flash of blue light. This is called the "Cherenkov Effect". The light can be seen by the optical sensors. The neutrinos leave a signature in the detector from which the IceCube scientists can extract the particle's energy, and sometimes the direction it was coming from. The strings and DOMs have been deployed in the ice by melting deep holes with a hot-water drill head that was specifically designed for IceCube. Soon after each string was in its place, the holes froze shut - as long as the Antarctic plateau exists, the IceCube sensors will never see the sunlight again.

The data collected by the DOMs is sent to the IceCube Laboratory at the surface, where it is recorded, filtered, processed and forwarded to the Northern hemisphere for analysis. The IceCube detector [picture courtesy of the IceCube collaboration] Why is IceCube so big? Because of their nature, neutrinos hardly ever interact with matter. And on top of that, the flux of neutrinos with very high energies is pretty low - so the bigger the detector, the better the chance of catching at least a few of them every year. Why at the South Pole? In order for the optical sensors to see the Cherenkov light, the surrounding medium must be transparent to the visible and UV spectrum - ice is just perfect for that! The South Pole is the only place on Earth with a sufficiently deep and clear ice sheet. The 1 km long IceCube strings are covered by 1.5 km of ice, to shield the sensitive DOMs from unwanted atmospheric charged particles, like muons, that might leave a signature in the detector that can not be distinguished from a cosmic neutrino. But even despite the big shield, a lot of those particles reach the detector anyway - that's why all downgoing particle events (i.e. that enter IceCube from above) are ditched as false events in the high-energy analysis, because nobody can say for sure whether the signal was created by cosmic neutrino or something else. Upgoing signals, on the other hand, must have been created by particles that have traveled through the whole Earth, and only neutrinos can do that! Besides the main high-energy array, IceCube features two sub-experiments: "IceTop" at the surface consists of two DOMs on top of every string, and is used mainly as a veto mechanism against downgoing muons. "DeepCore" in the center of IceCube features strings with a much higher DOM density to detect lower-energy neutrinos, e.g. for studying neutrino oscillation. To get a better idea of IceCube, you can have a look at the picture above (courtesy of the IceCube collaboration) or visit icecube.wisc.edu.

Madison: Settling in

[prev] [next] [top] The first two weeks of winterover Training have gone by in notime, and I have been very much enjoying every little piece of it so far. Well that's not entirely true, there were some organisational issues to get over with (like getting an American bank account, American Health insurance, a VISA orientation class, all of which came with a load full of paperwork. And let me tell you, getting an American Social Security Number is particularly nasty ;)). But apart from that, it's a lot of fun. Everyone here at WIPAC (Wisconsin Particle Astrophysics Center) is excited to work with us, which makes me feel at home already. Besides, Johannes and I get along great, and I have no doubt we will make a good winterover team. Having used the words "IceCube" and "Winterover" a lot already, I figured this second entry of my journal might be a good opportunity to explain a little (see the blue boxes above). I will try to drop an IceCube or winterover fact every once in a while throughout my journal, so if you think I'm boring you might at least learn something ;).

Madison: Getting along

[prev] [next] [top] State St Block 100 {cite}Life as a winterover trainee is no walk

in the park - except when it is. Last week, Johannes and I were roaming the State Capitol front yard, when suddenly we found ourselves in the middle of the Madison Outreach Pride Parade. Shiny clothes, rainbow flags, candy-coloured wigs and lots of exposed skin everywhere. Once we made our way through the marching bands and dancing people, we decided to get some pizza and enjoy the show from a distance - equipped with our cameras. I managed to catch the scenery in my favorite Madison-photograph so far - I decided to go with monochrome for this one, because the vivid colours would blind you for the true beauty of this moment. For my 27th birthday, we enjoyed a couple of beers at the Union Terrace with Sarah and Khan, two other researchers from Germany we met in our VISA orientation class. We went to something called "Dane Dances" - and holy cannoli, when it comes to open air disco, the Madison folks are ON FIRE!

Speaking of beers, Madison has quite a selection of local brews. Take a look at the picture below, maybe you can figure out why I chose that particular one ;) "Das gilt auch für Akademiker!" Prost.

Ice Facts nō 2: Winterover training Here's to all the people who keep asking me: "Are you getting locked in freezers a lot for winterover training?"

The answer is: No. We have giant freezers here, but those are for DOM (Digital Optical Module) testing rather than for winterover natural selection. But luckily, deep-freezing winterover trainees still SEEMS to have a certain fascination on some WIPAC scientists, so I get to try the freezers out from time to time - and -40 °C is really not as bad as I thought. Until the cold starts creeping up your pants and sleeves. Then it's bad. Me, in the SPTS server room, having pulled the wrong plug [photo: Johannes Werthebach] So what AM I doing all day? There is a lot of things winterover-to-bes have to learn before being released to the ice. They have to know the IT infrastructure of IceCube like the back of their hands - every single server and switch, all the power supplies, each cable. Ralf has us stripping down each machine to its pieces and putting it back together again - not in the actual IceCube data center obviously, but at the SPTS, the South Pole Test System. That means most of our time we spend between SPTS server racks. It's noisy, but also full of exciting sophisticated technical Schnickschnack! :) Another winterover trainee task is to load the big IceCube cargo crate, which leaves for South Pole mid September. So far, we packed it up with roughly 1.5 metric tons of UPS batteries and spare hard drives - almost good to go! The IceCube cargo crate, ready to be packed by two busy winterover minions.

Madison: Rainy days

[prev] [next] [top] The sun does not always shine over Madison. In fact, it has been getting quite autumnal around here lately. A perfect opportunity to to get a little exercise in handling my new camera! Trust me though, for a fully-trained perfectionist like me it's not easy to pick up a new hobby just like that. But with a little help from all-time photography expert Johannes, I do manage to take a not-so-bad picture from time to time. My new favorite Madison photograph is also quite a luckshot I guess: Catching leaves on East Mifflin Street Thunderbolt and lightning, very very fright'ning... Johannes and his lucky umbrella

The Midwest: Where the wild things are

[prev] [next] [top] The electric screwdriver utters a tiny bzzzzzzzd, as I affix the last bolt into the heavy lid of the IceCube cargo crate. I am now sitting on top of two metric tons of shit-expensive technical IceCube gear! Packing up all that stuff was a lot of fun - unpacking it at Pole in freezing -30 °C at an elevation of almost 3000 m: Probably not so much. The crate will leave for Pole this week, but will arrive about three weeks later than ourselves 'round the end of November. Me fixing the IceCube cargo crate [photo: Johannes Werthebach] While we've been busy packing up the crate, summer has returned to the city of Madison. As we step outside, we get struck by 30 °C and the mid-Wisconsin typical oppressive humidity. Time for a swim in lake Mendota! The water is pleasantly cool and so crystal clear that I can see the giant carps swimming around my feet. I close my eyes for a second to enjoy the moment... until suddenly someone nearby fires up a lawn mower the size of a pickup truck. Besides the fact you can't buy decent bread here, the one thing that bugs me about Madison is the CONSTANT NOISE. The lawn around the Capitol gets mowed daily (no kidding), and as soon as the mowers are gone, leaf blowers shovel fallen foliage from one pile to another and back again for several hours. There are always truck engines running everywhere, and the few seconds in between all of this are filled with the sirens of an ambulance.

But yeah, this really is complaining at the highest possible level - but sometimes I forget how privileged I get to be for the awesome job I have in this amazing city, and for the kickass company of my WO buddy Johannes. And the sky's the limit! [photo: Johannes Werthebach] Khan (nice guy), me and Johannes at Devil's Lake Although winterover training has been getting tougher since the focus shifted from hardware to software, there still is enough time to explore the wild Midwest of America. The wildest thing we encountered so far is the "original Chicago deep dish pizza" - a 2 mm thin pizza crust topped with marinara sauce and 4 cm (!) of cheese. Yes, really. There are no regrets. Chicago at night, view from the top of Sears tower Chicago On top of Hancock Tower

Ice Facts nō 3: Packing for Pole So how does a winterover's packing list look like? First of all, you need a year's supply of EVERYTHING. This is more difficult than it sounds - or do you know exactly how much toothpaste you use up in 13 months? Or what kind of medication you might need? You can not just pack everything "just in case", since every winterover has a total baggage allowance of 46 kg.

Next to toiletries and all that everyday stuff, you need things that keep you entertained. I packed a shitload of yarn - maybe by the end of winter everybody on station will have a silly handmade sweater they didn't ask for! :D

The more nostalgic winterovers also should pack a buncha' photographs of their loved ones - there's no seeing them in a looooong time. The most expensive and spacially demanding items in a winterover's bag: Warm clothes. Lot's of it. That includes heavy socks, hats, scarfs, balaclavas and long underwear. And of course you want the fancy Merino stuff, so plan on spending quite some money (for what I know it's worth every penny though; I got to try some of it during some cold Madison days already). And that's only the base layer of what you will be wearing at Pole. The ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear will luckily be issued to you right before you go - you have to give it back upon re-deployment when your year is over though. The good thing is: During the austral summer, people can send you stuff. So if you forgot to pack your underpants, it's not the end of the world - at least not if you notice before the end of summer ;) Packing for Pole These pair of underpants will soon go where almost no underpantses have gone before

Home vacation: Farewell

[prev] [next] [top] The most important lesson I learned in the last couple of months: NEVER provoke your own luck at the airport with a carelessly spoken jings. "I never lost a bag at the airport before" is NOT a smart thing to say when baggage claim is about to start.

So yeah, my vacation started with a couple of hours of unintended idle time at the airport, in which I was waiting for my luggage that apparently decided to board a different plane than myself. Anyway, in the end I was happily reunited with my bag, my boyfriend Simon and my parents at exit 5 of Düsseldorf airport, ready for my 10-days of home vacation. These 10 days unfortunately went by in notime. I tried to spend as much quality time with Simon and my friends as possible, visit all my favorite Münster bars and restaurants, have a little coffee party with the guys from AG Kappes - my workgroup at the Münster physics department - and I even had another little going-away party just for my family! I have not yet fully realized I won't be seeing those folks for over a year. I am afraid that's about to hit me very soon...

Luckily Simon made me the most awesome going-away present: A virtual 360 °C panorama tour of all my favorite places in the "real world". This is where I will be going when I become homesick. The best dog in the world My family's garden at the most beautiful time of the year The first icebergs! No, this is not Antarctica - I am flying over Groenland on my way back to Madison

For my German-speaking friends: Herzliche Einladung zum Astroseminar der Uni Münster! Als alter winterover-Hase wird mein Kumpel Emanuel dieses Jahr einen Vortrag mit dem Titel "Von Neutrinos und Erdbeeren am Südpol" über sein Jahr in der Eiswüste halten. Dazu gibt es wie immer jede Menge andere spannende Vorträge rund um das Thema Astrophysik; eingeladen ist jeder, der Bock drauf hat (kein Physik-Vorwissen erforderlich). Wann: 20. - 21. Oktober (Fr und Sa)

Wo: Wilhelm-Klemm-Str. 10, 48149 Muenster

Link: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.Astroseminar/

Denver: The southernmost fire brigade on Earth

[prev] [next] [top] "IC to Team Alpha: Report your situation!"

"Team Alpha to -bbrrzzz IC: Large fire ... second floor of B building - brrzzzzzzz zz of smoke ... one person missing. I repeat: One person missing. Requesting backup. Over -brrzzzzz."

"IC copies. Sending in Team Bravo." But there's no time waiting for Team Bravo. The visibility is literally zero, black smoke everywhere. With one hand I feel the ground in front of me, my other hand is sliding the wall; slowly crawling forward inch by inch. My team mate is crawling behind me, carefully following the dim glow of my oxygen tank.

Suddenly my hand runs into something that feels like a human foot - the missing person is unconsciously leaning against the wall in front of me! Screaming our encounter over the coms system, I make a desperate attempt to tie my rope around the victim's chest, in pitch black darkness and with heavy firefighter's gloves on my hands. Icecold sweat runs down my face as the regulator on my SCBA mask starts vibrating - an indicator for my tank being almost empty.

"I am low on air - let's get him the f*ck out of here!" When we finally close the door of the smoky corridor in building B behind us, both my team mate and me rip off our SCBA masks to inhale a chunk of fresh air. Sean, the fire chief of the Aurora Public Safety Training Center, declares the scenario successful - what a relief!

As we check on the victim, he is not breathing - which is probably because he does not have a head. And is made out of lead and plastic. He's also not wearing clothes, but that's a whole different story. I present to you: The South Pole fire brigade graduates and their trainers!

Back: Johannes, Janelle, Luis, Aaron, Glenn, Rob, Marco, Zeke, Tony, Zane, Greg, Paul, Jessie

Middle: Sean, Juan, Denise, Cherisa, Martin, Steven, Ta-Lee

Front: Raffi The cute lieutenant Three firefighters waiting for their turn on the extinguisher. You're wondering what is going on? Firefighter training in Denver, CO is going on! Since there will be no professional firefighters at South Pole station during winter, a certain amount of people has to be trained accordingly; to become the southernmost fire brigade on earth! Juan, Sean and Jessie are the three professional firefighters who's lucky job it is to get us in shape - us, a mixed bunch of scientists, technicians, cooks, plumbers, electricians, machinists. We all met each other just this week, and now we are supposed to fight fires together. Exciting! Me feeling way too cool [photo: Johannes Werthebach] Becoming a firefighter is tough. The full gear, including helmet, hood, coat, pants, boots, gloves and air pack, weighs almost 30 kg. They make us crawl through mazes, fully bunkered up, in complete darkness and while breathing off a tank. I am actually pretty good at the maze because I am tiny, with a record time of 5:15 minutes! What I am not good at is dragging unconscious people around, let alone up a flight of stairs. I have a hard enough time carrying my own extra weight of gear! Every night I get home with sore muscles, dirty clothes and outright utterly exhausted. At this point I want to acknowledge my sister Claudia, who happens to be an actual professional firefighter: You are my hero! :)

Despite the physical inconveniences the fire training might bring along, I am having the time of my life right now. If you ever get the chance to winter at Pole, sign up for fire training - trust me, that's what you want. Not only because the lieutenant is really cute. One last thing: It never gets old to see people in full gear wiggling their butts to prevent their fire-fighter-is-not-moving-alarm-device from going off all the time... :D Brave firefighters walking in slomo

Estes Park: Of trustfalls and hoolahoops

[prev] [next] [top] A herd of elk right in the middle of the park After a great but exhausting week of fire school in Denver, the soon-to-be winterovers are looking forward to a few less physically demanding days at the YMCA in Estes Park, Colorado. It's a three hour drive to the hostel, and because I usually get ridiculously carsick, our station manager Marco offered me the passenger seat of his car. I may be missing out on the party bus, but Marco even downloaded a bunch of Led Zeppelin albums for the ride because he knows it's my favorite band. Jackpot! A male elk visiting his buddy in town We are the first to arrive in Estes Park. It's a pretty chilly October evening, so I'm glad to sit by the fire in the huge lobby of the YMCA, munching pizza, while Marco is checking everybody in. One by one, the group is dribbling in, being handed their room assignments. I'm gonna be sharing a room with NOAA officer Cherisa for the week, whom I'll find to be pretty easy to live with! :) The week soon turns out not to be quite as relaxing as we thought it would be - after all, we're not here for vacation, but for hardcore winterover team building! They hired a guy named Shawn to get our group in shape for 13 months of being confined to a small cage in the middle of nowhere; and although I think he's doing a great job, not quite everybody is digging his methods. I wasn't too convinced at first either, but after I have accepted the fact that this was gonna be - no matter if people were up for it or not - a week full of communication lectures, group exercises with hoolahoops, leaky pipes and twisted ropes, scavenger hunts in the mountains, and a boat-building competition, it is actually a lot of fun. Boats being carried to their final floating trials in the YMCA's pool The YMCA Arguably, the food at the YMCA is not the greatest. Every night at dinner, you can watch 30 winterovers one by one sneaking up to the kid's corner to snitch corn poppers and chicken nuggets, because the "adult" food sucks. As a vegetarian, my food options here are usually reduced to the salad bar - but if you have a year of very limited amounts of fresh food ahead of you, why not go to town on the greens while you still can. Apart from the food, the Estes Park YMCA is really not the worst place to be. Beautiful sunsets, fresh air, lots of wildlife, and the stunning Colorado mountains all around. Generations of winterover crews have spent their last week in the real world at this very spot, and the wild anticipations of the things that are about to come give this place a certain magic. Estes Park, where teams are being built. Estes Park right after sunset

Ice Facts nō 4: Extreme Cold Weather Gear Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) Gear includes all kinds of clothes to protect you from South Pole's harsh environment. The most important ECW item is the "Big Red": The red Canada goose parka which does a perfect job to shield you from the wind and cold, has a trizillian pockets to store (and loose) all your stuff in, and even has your name velcroed to it so that people know who you are when they meet you outside and are not yet familiarized with the way you walk ;)

Then, of course, there are the "Bunny Boots": Big white boots made out of rubber to keep the warm air inside and isolate your feet from the icy ground they are walking on (I would later swap mine for a pair of the much more comfortable blue boots you can see in the picture).

All your ECW comes in big orange bags which further contain three kinds of mittens, a neck gaiter, a hat, goggles, wind-shield pants, and a bunch of other stuff. Everything that's in there has to be returned upon your re-deployment to the real world. A winterover's gear

Christchurch: Barefoot

[prev] [next] [top] A rose floating down the little creek that runs through the Botanical Gardens of Christchurch Christchurch in New Zealand is THE hub for everybody who goes to Antarctica, at least if their destination is McMurdo. The USAP (United States Antarctic Program) has it's own little terminal right next to the Christchurch airport, where they park all the big military airplanes that eventually get people to the icy continent.

But for that to happen, the weather has to be just right - in Christchurch as well as in McMurdo, which at this time of year can be a little tricky. You can't land a plane on a runway made out of ice in shitty winds and blizzards, and that's why there's a good chance of getting stuck in Christchurch for a few days before actually reaching Antarctica. And let me tell you, Christchurch is not the worst place to get stuck in. Two of these duffel bags have my name on them! But first things first: Gear issue at the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC). Thousands of ECW items are being stored here, waiting to be handed out to intrepid Antarctic explorers. In the big changing room, I find two large orange duffel bags with my name on them, containing all the clothes that are being issued to me, including a Big Red, a Little Red, Bunny Boots, mittens, liners, bibs, etc.; all selected for me according to the clothing sizes I had submitted with a form months ago. It takes me an hour to go through all my stuff, trying things on, swapping out sizes. By the time I'm done, we are all being herded together into the big conference room for the mandatory briefing on safety, rules of behaviour and etiquette at the US Antarctic Bases. The terminal with the flags of all the countries who signed the Antarctic Treaty. The entrance to the USAP Passenger Terminal. The CDC is right next door. With a year of insanely negative temperatures and six months of darkness in mind, I am well aware that this is my last chance to fill up my brain with all the good memories of lush green vegetation, chirping birds, and summer vibes. And what place could be a better fit for the purpose than the Botanical Gardens? Early in the morning of the first day of being delayed for my flight to Antarctica, I set out from my hotel room to go find the Botanical Gardens of Christchurch, equipped with just a bottle of water, my loyal camera and a credit card. The springtimey weather is absolutely lovely, and it doesn't take long to find the right way.

The Christchurch gardens are among the most peaceful places I've been to. There's a bunch of people around, but nobody is loud or littering or inconsiderate. After having roamed between the flower patches for a good hour, I spot a dude with a guitar under a tree. I hang around for a little while, listening to the familiar strumming while watching the sparrows pick up bread crumbs on the dusty trail. Ducks, dabbling, totally unimpressed by my camera. Pretty plant found in a greenhouse of the Botanical Gardens One of the many greenhouses, containing everything we won't have in Antarctica - mostly warmth and humidity. I almost decided to head back to the hotel, when I suddenly get struck by the brilliant idea to take my shoes off - because when will I be able to do that again, outside? So I roam the whole garden again, this time with no shoes. With the sensation of the soft grass beneath my toes, everything seems even greener and more vivid than before. But even the most hardcore garden fans get hungry, so I meet up with part of my winterover crew in a Speakeasy that Cherisa found. Speakeasies are bars or restaurants that can not be identified as such from the outside, and their only advertisement is the word of their customers. This one looks like a laundromat to the passer-by, but when you open the door you find yourself in a cozy little cocktail bar with Asian flair to it. Jack, the sparrow The Speakeasy Barefoot - one last time Upon return to my hotel room in the evening of the second day in the springtime of the Southern hemisphere, I find a letter that has been slipped under my door, saying that I am expected at the airport at 6:45 the next morning. Ouuuuh exciting! :D

Just because you are being summoned to the terminal doesn't actually mean you fly to Antarctica the same day; the weather in McMurdo can change so drastically within hours that you might be sent home again, sometimes mid-flight - that is called boomeranging. But we are lucky this nice, warm springtime morning of October 31st, so that we soon find ourselves shoulder to shoulder in the big cargo hold of the C-17 aircraft, which after a five hour flight sets on to land at McMurdo Station Airfield, Antarctica. My first glimpse of Antarctica from the tiny window of the C-17 Inside the cargo hold of the C-17. Paul, Aaron and Tony being all excited

McMurdo: Icebound finally!

[prev] [next] [top] McMurdo Station, Antarctica, with Scott's Hut in the foreground My stomach begins to feel funny as the pilot starts to accelerate the big C-17 "Globemaster" airplane on the runway. Without my earplugs, the noise of the engine is almost unbearable. I can not see what is going on, because we are strapped to our jumper seats on both sides of the cargo hold, facing big containers between us. From here, it is impossible to see through one of the few tiny circular windows. It takes almost forever until the massive structure of steel and khaki has gained enough speed to finally take off - on its way to Antarctica! Flying in a C-17 is an adventure by itself. No commercial airline flies to Antarctica, so you get to fly with one of these badass military planes of the American Air Force - not exactly the most comfortable experience in the world, but definitely exciting! Me in the cockpit of the LC-130 Almost everybody who is on transit to South Pole has to go through McMurdo station. It is the biggest of the Antarctic stations; in summer it can hold up to 1200 people. I only spent one night here, so I did not get to see all the facilities except my quarters, the galley and both bars.

The gateway to South Pole is Williams Airfield, which is located about 30 minutes away from McMurdo station by "Ivan the Terra Bus", a terribly slow vehicle that used to shuttle passengers in McMurdo for generations. People get to wait around at the airfield a lot, because it happens quite occasionally that flights get canceled at last minute due to bad weather in McMurdo, at South Pole or in between - luckily, we were able to take off after about 2 hours.

The big C-17s can not land on the snowy skiway at South Pole, so the aircrafts flying the primary missions to the bottom of the world are the LC-130s, aka "Hercules". They are smaller, lighter and equipped with skis instead of wheels. Part of my winterover crew waiting for their flight to Pole on Williams Airfield, McMurdo:

Tony, Martin, Rob, Marco, Johannes, Sabrina, Luis, Denise Mount Erebus quietly watching over Williams Airfield Ivan the Terra Bus [photo: Johannes Werthebach] Flying LC-130 is exciting, but not exactly the most comfortable thing in the world Two sleepy Antarctic explorers on board the LC-130

South freakin' Pole!

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Sol 1 The Earth is now officially revolving around me South Pole. I made it to South Pole. The dream is real! This is the happiest day of my life. I can not find enough words to describe how breathtakingly beautiful this place is. I am still overwhelmed by happieness, astonishment and all the new impressions that are flooding my brain right now, it almost feels like flying. ... Or, well, I could still be suffering from altitude sickness which has about the same effect; I feel about 20 lbs lighter and the station seems to move around a little like on a boat. I felt it very heavy the first day, and of course you are supposed to take it seriously, but I actually kinda liked it ;). The temperature at Pole is a negative 45 °C right now (that's kinda chilly). The sun is high up in the sky as it will be for the next months. The picture you can see above is taken around 10 pm. Settling in on station, being handed over my new job and processing all the amazing stuff that is happening on top of that keeps me very busy, but you will hear from me shortly!

Frostnips and where to find them

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Sol 5 Sundogs over the elevated station [photo: Luis Gonzalez] ICL, the IceCube Lab, is located about a kilometer North from Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station - which is quite a walk, considering you have to wear all your ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear, you are walking on snow, and icy wind might be blowing in your face depending on which direction you walk. So yeah, this is very much not a walk in the park, especially when you are being an idiot - like myself - and take off your outer-layer-mittens in -60 °C windchill for a few seconds to adjust your neck gaiter. Once your hands are cold, in this environment there is no way of getting them warm again with pure blood circulation. I had to walk back the whole way from ICL thinking my hands would gonna fall off (which is a legit reason for NPQ btw). The bad thing: It hurts even more once you're back on station and they start getting warm again. Seriously, that's incredibly painful. Luckily it turned out to not be a real frostbite quite yet. Lesson learned. Despite this frosty experience, I have been very much enjoying every minute of life on Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station so far, even though I was not able to sleep yet, most likely because of my altitude symptoms and because I am just too excited to be here. This is so very much the right place on earth for me that I am already considering coming back. The station is all neat and clean, the food is amazing, and I feel very much at home. They assigned me a windowless room at first which I was quite unhappy about, but luckily one of my co-Winterovers switched rooms with me - apparently there are people who do not like 24 hours of sunlight in their room ;). Martin and James, the last season's IceCube winterovers, are turning their duties over to us during the next two weeks. We are taking it easy though while we are still adjusting to the elevation. So there is some free time to kill, which I sometimes spend helping out my new friend Grant in the dishpit - I like it there, and the community very much appreciates people who pitch in, which gives me my daily dose of good-deed-afterglow :) The two old and the two new IceCube winterovers in front of IceCube laboratory [photo: Martin Wolf] Dishpit dream team: Me learning from master Grantland [photo: Johannes Werthebach]

Science Facts nō 2: IceTop Snow Measurements James and Raffi getting ready for IceTop snow measurements [photo: Martin Wolf] If you paid attention in my IceCube facts #1, you might have noticed that IceCube does not only have in-ice optical sensors to measure the neutrinos, but also features some modules right beneath the surface - these are called IceTop stations. Each of the 86 strings that are deployed in the ice has one of them on top. All together, the IceTop stations are used to measure lower-energy neutrinos, and they also serve as a veto-mechanism for the in-ice DOMs.

The problem with stuff that is set up at the surface of South Pole ice plateau: It does not stay at the surface for very long. Things are being burried in snow drift faster than you can say "penguin". Since the amount of snow that covers IceTop has an affect on the measurements, every once in a while the IceCube winterovers have to go out and estimate the snow level on every single IceTop station. This can be a long and cold adventure, depending on the windchill and how many people can be motivated to help. Fortunately, the old winterovers Martin and James were still here (they belong to the handfull of toasty people who are still waiting for a plane to take them back to the real world) to help Johannes and me, so it took us only two afternoons. Physics in a desert of ice [photo: Martin Wolf] Martin measuring the snow accumulation at IceTop station 62A

Of weather balloons and toasty winterovers

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Sol 14 Me launching a weather balloon {center}"Attention South Pole Station, attention South Pole Station!" My well-deserved sleep is being ended abruptly by the announcement over the radio. "Flight SK-21 from McMurdo is canceled. I repeat: Flight SK-21 from McMurdo is CANCELED." Listening closely, I can hear a mumbled expression of disappointment rolling through South Pole Station. The radio all-call that just woke me up is not unfamiliar at all: It means that today's flight from McMurdo to South Pole Station is canceled again - like all the flights in the last week. It also means that no cargo and no new summer workers are coming in today, and, most importantly, no winterovers of last season can get out. There is still a handfull of them on station, and being delayed over and over again has made them a little tetchy. Most of them are missing out on their well-deserved vacations, others are just understandably fed up with being stuck here.

I may or may not be in their situation in a year from now; but so far, every day here is another day in paradise for me! My IceCube driver seat duties still leave me enough time to explore the station and see what everybody else is doing. This week's mission: Annoy the weather people! The meteorology department is in the B2 lab, right next to my own workplace. So from time to time I go over there, visit my new friends JJ and Janelle to see what they're up to. If you get on their nerves long enough, they let you launch one of their weather balloons (see picture to the right)! :) A toasty last season's winterover hopelessly waiting for a plane at South Pole station airfield Back in the days when planes were still arriving at South Pole

Ice Facts nō 5: South Pole aircrafts South Pole aviation is a particularly tricky business. A mission's success depends on many different factors - mostly weather, which is pretty much unpredictable in McMurdo, at Pole and in between. For a plane to fly, the weather has to be just perfect. It can changes within minutes though, and it happens quite frequently that planes take off in McMurdo, fly all the way Pole just to discover that the weather has changed so severely that they aren't able to land safely, and fly all the way back. This is called "boomeranging". There are four planes to fly missions to Pole: Most cargo and people come in on a LC-130 or Hercules, the biggest ski-equipped air craft to land here. Backup missions are flown in the much smaller Baslers. Their cabin is not pressurized, so they have to fly very low, which means you get a beautiful view of Antarctica! The tiniest planes to fly to Pole are the Twinotters. Tourists or important people often arrive in those. Their engines are small enough to be heated up externally, so they can actually be parked at Pole for several days - in contrast to the Hercules machines, whose engines have to run the whole time they're here. The by far biggest Antarctic air crafts are the C-17s or Globemasters. Those are not equipped with skies and are way too heavy to land on the snowy South Pole ski way, so they are used to get people from Christchurch to McMurdo's Phoenix air field, which is located on the ice shelf and can carry more load, until it melts in the summer. The annual South Pole air drop is also flown by these gigantic machines, because it does not require landing. Flying a Basler garantuees the nicest view of Antarctica Twinotters sometimes stay at Pole "overnight" The Globemaster is too heavy to land on South Pole's snowy ski way Hercules fly all primary missions to South Pole [photo: Johannes Werthebach] Fun fact: For each of the South Pole air crafts, there is a server with the same name in ICL! Globemaster takes care of syslog and serves as an NSF mount, hercules hosts the IceCube wiki and SVN, basler is our backup server and twinotter is home of our monitoring system.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane??

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Sol 22 A not-so-busy week at South Pole!

It's my third week here, and we already set a new absolute record-low of air crafts arriving. We only had four planes so far, all of them in my first week - basically every department on station is behind schedule now, either waiting for people or cargo or both to finally arrive at Pole. There is a ton of summer workers sitting in McMurdo who already hit their RETURN date from Pole without having been able to even get here.

On Sunday, we finally got an aircraft coming in - unfortunately one that wasn't going to land here. The conditions only allowed for the annual air drop, which means a big C-17, or Globemaster, approaching station, circling above for a couple of times, then dropping some cargo near station site, and returns to Christchurch, leaving behind a hand full of crying still-on-station 2017 winterovers - or leftovers, how they are nowadays called - who desperately want to get out of here. Since work for most departments here is basically frozen (chrchr) until cargo arrives, the station population killed their time with allerlei Unfug; e.g. sliding down the snow drifts on kitchen equipment (see picture below) or telling comforting lies about the weather situation to the leftovers. The monster's approaching South Pole The airdropped goods parachuting above the berms The Globemaster, flying a very low loop over the station After another week of anxiously watching the weather forecasts and listening to Comms announcements about flight updates, we finally, FINALLY got a Hercules coming in today, which was a big relief for almost everybody on station, especially the leftovers. I am a little sad they're leaving though, I really got to like them despite their tetchyness about being stuck here. But I guess I have to accept the sad truth that everybody has to leave South Pole at some point. ;)

My boss Ralf also arrived on the Hercules, which means we finally can get started on IceCube summer upgrades! The 2017 leftovers before boarding their plane home.

Goodbye James, Grant, Gavin, Andrew, Martin and Doug! Martin and me holding the newly dented IceCube tobaggon (totally not my fault) The Hercules with the old winterovers aboard taking off (you can see the ICL in the background)

Happy Thanksgiving, South Pole!

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Sol 25 When IceCube is happy, the winterovers have time to play some Doppelkopf Beep beep! ... Beep beep! ... Beep BEEP! Okay okay, I'm up! What is it now? Does baby need a diaper change? In fact it does, except that the baby is IceCube, and the diaper is some part of its system that misbehaves. And if IceCube becomes very unhappy, it wakes up one of its winterovers over the radio to get some attention. And tonight is my turn.

At a place that has brightest sunlight 24 hours a day, it's sometimes hard to tell the time by peaking through a window. But you can tell by the people you meet in the hallways. At night, the normally very busy station is fairly quiet, and the only people I run into are our breakfast chef Denise, and Josh, one of our satellite engineers, who is getting his first coffee of the work day.

Having reached the B2 lab, I can quickly identify tonight's problem as a crash of the Data Processing and Filtering (PnF) system. This happens quite frequently, so I know exactly what to do. Nonetheless, I sit by my computer for a while to wait till baby IceCube calms down slowly. Yes, that's right - As an IceCube winterover, you work whenever IceCube needs you, be it in the middle of the night or in the middle of your bi-weekly two-minute shower. Johannes and I work in alternating 7-day shifts, in which we have to pay very close attention to our radios in case IceCube gives us an emergency call. Even though my ongoing shift has been extremely page-intensive so far, I am still having a blast at South Pole - especially now that I have officially celebrated my first Thanksgiving ever! I learned that nowadays, this American holiday is mostly about food, of which I had plenty - and vegetarian turkey really can be super tasty! The galley staff does an absolutely amazing job to keep us all happy. Yummie! The galley is ready for Thanksgiving dinner

Ice Facts nō 6: The South Pole Traverse Imagine a caravane in a desert - but instead of camels, you've got heavy bigass bulldozers; instead of tents, you've got containers on gigantic sleds; and instead of sand, you've got ice as far as the eyes can see. That's the South Pole Traverse.

Three times a summer season, 10 intrepid heroes go on this incredible journey, towing fuel bladders all the way from McMurdo to South Pole to provide the station with liquid power for the winter. There obviously is no paved road to Pole - so the Traverse has to make its way through more than 1600 km of ice and snow. The first vehicle in the caravane carries a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to detect the many crevasses in the glacier, which can be fatal to mission and life. The journey of the Traverse takes about three weeks with 12 hours of driving every day. Our 10 heroes have to spent their leisure time in very close quarters: There is a cargo-container sized module for sleeping, and another one that servers as kitchen and bathroom. Eric the Traverse guy is showing us his vehicle at the Traverse Open House The fuel bladders

May the fuel be with you

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Sol 29 Inside South Pole Station power plant. You can't see it, but it's super noisy! I found this little fella in the power plant control room A lot of people that follow my blog requested images of station interior - and I take fan mail very seriously! So today's journal entry is about one of the most important places inside Amundsen-Scott South Pole station: The power plant. Normally, people are not allowed in the power plant unless they are staff or have some serious business to do there - and my business is pretty serious! As a member of South Pole Station fire brigade, I need to know every last corner of the station in my sleep, especially the power plant as a fire-hazardous area. So Rob, our fire brigade team lead, gave us a tour:

South Pole Station entirely depends on jet fuel which is brought here by plane and the South Pole Traverses. Below you can see the "fuel bladders" that are towed all the way from McMurdo to South Pole on a sled! At Pole, the fuel is stored in gigantic cylinders in the fuel arch, and converted into power and heat by four bigass yellow engines. Those are supposed not to catch on fire - but IF shit would hit the fan, there is an emergency power plant on the other side of the station, which could keep the winterovers alive for the rest of the year. Let's hope that won't be necessary... One of four engines that keeps South Pole station alive. The red nozzles above it are part of the CO2 fire suppression system Aestheticly arranged pipes in the fuel room Speaking of fuel: Since last week, I am a proud member of the winterover fuelie team! Together with Rob, who is also one of our research associates (RAs) besides fire team lead, and Justin, our facilities engineer, I am responsible for fueling the last plane that leaves Pole (because the summer fuelies will be on it), and the first plane that gets here next year. The job also includes testing our fuel for sediments and water; it might get used to refuel some of the aircrafts during the summer. The most awesome part of the job though: Marshalling the last Herc. Isn't that exciting?! I've been studying marshalling signs all month! :) A former winterover fuelie, taking the tank level in the fuel arch. It's a constant -51 °C down here! Me testing fuel for the next airplane. Bright and clear? Check! [photo: Johannes Werthebach]

Fifty shades of white

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Sol 40 Almost whiteout conditions in the berms Just chillin' Sometimes even I need a break from everything, so today I ventured out to the berms - a huge, mysterious area near the station where all the forgotten and lost things of Antarctica end up. It stretches out for miles - and it's the only place at South Pole where you can ever truly be alone. If you take a close enough look, you find all kinds of interesting items out here, most of them half or completely buried beneath the snow. And if you're not careful, you will find yourself in one of the many crevasses that open up between pieces of furniture, cable spools, Christmas trees and scrap metal, and you will eventually become a forgotten piece of South Pole history as well.

Luckily, this tragic fate passed me by, so I could continue my lone Sunday afternoon roam through this peaceful, yet nostalgic little world of its own. Whenever things trouble me or I am feeling sad, I come out here to regain perspective. It reminds me where I am: South Pole, the bottom of the world. "Do not freeze!" If you dig long enough, you could furnish your whole house from stuff you find in the berms

Science Facts nō 3: Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) The Askaryan Radio Arrary ... pardon me, the Askaryan Radio ARRAY is a sister project of IceCube. Like the Cube, it is also looking for high energy Neutrinos, but instead of optical sensors it utilizes radio antennas to detect our favorite particles. The measurement principle of ARA is based upon the Askaryan effect, which describes the generation of charge anisotropies in bulk media (such as ice) caused by high-energy neutrino induced particle cascades. The anisotropy emits coherent radio waves which can be detected by the ARA antennas. At the end of this summer season, the experiment will consist of six stations with four holes each, where every hole is holding 4 antennas. Once completed, ARA will cover an area far bigger than IceCube, although with a far smaller detector density. It's neutrino detection sweetspot is at energies even higher than IceCube's, which makes it an important addition to the South Pole Neutrino Club. Looking down the ARA hole. Better don't drop your camera! It started out as innocent swag...

Fun with ARRARY

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Sol 53 The ARA drill site Man, am I glad I brought my big bear mittens with me! With one hand I am shielding my face from the ice cold wind, with the other I try to keep the camera warm that is sitting in it's case on my lab. The snowmobile is speeding with 30 miles an hour through the icy desert that lies beyond the perimeter of South Pole Station. The ARA (Askaryan Radio Array) drill camp is out here - and that is where I am going today. It is a long snowmobile ride, almost 25 minutes - especially when the wind is blowing like it is today. I can see the camp in the distance, although I can barely make out a couple of rectangular shapes that are reflecting the sunlight near the horizon. The way to the camp is marked by green flags every 50 meters; I am watching them fly by one by one as I am pushing my snowmobile to its limits. It's a ton of fun, but the faster you go, the more unforgiving is the airstream that painfully reminds you of every single exposed millimeter of your skin. ARA drilling in action Hot water is used to drill holes 200 m deep into the ice Having reached the camp around 9 in the morning, I am welcomed by the drillers who already have been out here for hours. I am just in time to witness the genesis of a new ARA hole - the hot-water drill head is ready to carve it's way 200 meters deep into the Antarctic ice cap.

I am not here to help with drilling though, but with deploying the first ARA string at this drill site, which is also super interesting - and most of all warm, because they set up a little shack around the hole that has already been completed earlier this week. The little hut is pretty packed with us six people, and I am trying my very best not to stand in the way and being as ingenious as possible. It's a big honor for me to be here - Since I wasn't there for IceCube drilling back in the construction days, the ARA people were so nice to let me come out here today to have a look and help out a little.

Very slowly the ARA string is lowered into the icy darkness beneath our feet. Four very sensitive radio antennas are about to be buried forever - together with one or two sharpies that someone might have accidentally dropped into the hole. Totally not my fault. An amazing cloud formation as seen from the ARA drill site Same clouds, back at South Pole Station's air field where an LC-130 is NOT unloading Christmas presents Lucky as I am, ARA is not the only super-exciting thing I got to witness today. In the pictures above you can see the awesome cloud formation I spotted on my way back to station. It almost looks like snow is falling at South Pole! I showed these pictures to the meteorology department - according to them, snow showers are not supposed to happen here ever, but they could not come up with a better explanation for the phenomenon. A Christmas miracle!

Ice Facts nō 7: Let's talk about the weather Gather 'round folks, it's time to talk about the weather. Well, actually there's not much to say except that it's cold as f*ck. Anyway, here we differentiate between two different kinds of cold-as-f*ck: The actual temperature and the windchill. The first one tells the temperature as it is taken by the outside thermometers; the latter tells you how it actually feels like when you go outside and stand in the wind. Those two can have veeeery different values sometimes! In summer, the (actual) temperature does not climb higher than -20 °C; in winter, it can drop down to almost -80 °C!

The daily weather board, one of which you can see below, also tells you the current "experienced" altitude calculated from the air pressure. This sometimes goes up to 10,800 ft, compared to the "actual" 9,301 ft. And believe me, you can really feel the difference when working out in the gym and the extra air you need is JUST NOT THERE. Phew. The humidity at South Pole is absolute 0 - always, everywhere. Except in the greenhouse and sometimes the sauna, which makes these rooms very frequently visited places on station. Some people, including me, have their own humidifiers in their rooms, but due to the constantly running air conditioning they don't work really well except when you seal your vents shut (which you are very much not supposed to) or let the humidifier blow directly in your face when you're asleep. It sometimes helps to air-dry your laundry on the clothesline in your room - it will drip dry in notime and adds a little bit of water to the air for at least a few hours. Absolute 0 % humidity inside South Pole Station The weather board. It's so nice out today!

We wish you a merry Christmas...

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Sol 55 Merry Christmas! {center}"Attention South Pole Station, attention South Pole Station!

This is Comms wishing everybody a Merry Christmas!" Yes, it's Christmas at South Pole! I can't believe I have been here for 55 days now - the weeks go by so fast when you are having the time of your life. Here's a little bit on how to celebrate the southernmost Christmas in the world:

First of all, a white Christmas is not a thing to be worried about here. Also I can say with at least 100% certainty that Easter, Halloween and my birthday will be white, too! On the other hand, we are missing a bunch of other christmassy things here; like candles (fire hazard), open fire places (guess what hazard), real Christmas trees (contamination hazard), and a relaxed attitude towards eating raw cookie dough (after being publicly shamed for cross-contaminating the gluten-free cookie dough with the dairy-free ginger bread cookie cutter, they made me stand in the corner where I had nothing else to do but snitching dough, so they eventually kicked me out of the galley. Pff). However, the one thing everybody, including myself, is missing the most around this time of year is their families and loved ones. I love you Mom & Dad (I promise to watch "Little Lord Fauntleroy" while getting drunk on Glüwein on the sofa like we always do :))! Dennis the power plant supervisor and Ta-Lee the RA enjoying the firefighter's Christmas party Singing Christmas carols over comms with McMurdo, Shackleton- and WAIS Divide field camps South Pole population has it's own little old and new traditions, though. Besides an A-MAZ-ING Christmas Eve dinner, we sang carols in Comms with McMurdo station, Shackleton field camp and WAIS Divide field camp over radio. We even had a little handmade-Secret-Santa ("Wichteln" for my German-speaking friends) going on! The ARFF (Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting) guys organised a little afternoon-Christmas party for us on the 23th (pardon me, 23rd), and we had another one in the gym on the 24th.

In the middle of the night before Christmas, someone had the glorious idea to transform the big pile of snowdrift behind the station into a gigantic sledding slope. It was actually a lot steeper than it looks on the pictures; it's a Christmas miracle that nobody NPQ'd (aka physically disqualified themselves from the program) that night... Going sledding the night before Christmas The IceCube/ ARA bobsled team Weeeeeeeeehh! Another highlight of Christmas celebrations at South Pole is the "Race around the World": 2.27 miles across all time zones of Earth, be it on foot, with skies, in a handcrafted cardboard sled, in a pink bunny costume on a unicycle or on top the party-barge towed by a bulldozer - everybody can participate. Only the runners are competing though; and the price for the fastest male and female finisher were 10 extra shower minutes to use at their convenience (not necessarily together)! Stupidest Christmas present ever, you think? Well, if you live at a place where you're allowed to take two two-minute showers per week only (to save water and energy), shower minutes pretty quickly develop to be the new inofficial currency, which can be traded for all kinds of candy on the South Pole black market. And now guess who won the race as South Pole's fastest woman? :) Me after (totally winning) the Race around the World [photo: Albrecht Karle] My winning certificate says I can take a 10 minute long shower! Jackpot!! With this in mind, I wish all of you a jolly little holiday time. For my friends and family at home: I've never missed you more than now at the Christmas holidays; reminding me of the coziness and comfort of your company. But know that I have found a new makeshift little family here at South Pole, consisting of wonderful and amazing people I can count on at all times, and who are there for me whenever I get homesick. I love you guys! Merry Christmas. PS: So far I have charged my cellphone twice since I got here. TWICE. No kidding. I am now officially the fastest woman at South Pole! [photo: Johannes Werthebach] Justin, Janelle, Zane and Cherisa performing at the South Pole Christmas party Whenever there is no fire to fight (which is always), the ARFF guys Trotter, Tim, Frank, Patrick, Andy and Coltyn play Seddlers of Catan I FINALLY got some mail after Christmas! Thanks everybody! :) The gym all chrome and shiny for the South Pole Christmas party!

Ice Facts nō 8: South Pole markers The Ceremonial South Pole There are two South Pole markers near Amundsen Scott South Pole Station. One is the ceremonial Pole marker, which moves along with the glacier and therefore remains at it's place relative to the station at all times. It is surrounded by 12 flags representing the founding members of the Antarctic Treaty: South Africa, Belgium, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, the USA, Norway, New Zealand, Russia, Chile, Australia, and Argentina. Since it is the sexier of the two Pole markers, it is more commonly seen in pictures.

The other marker, as you've probably correctly guessed, is the geographic South Pole marker, which marks the actual geographic South Pole. Since the glacier moves away beneath it, its position has to be re-calculated every year. The marker is replaced by a new design and moved to its new location every January 1st in a big ceremony. The old marker goes into a little marker museum here on station, where it remains for all future generations of Polies to see. Usually, all winterovers sign their season's marker, so that their names remain a part of South Pole forever. Both markers used to be right next to each other; but due to the constant moving of the ice cap, their current distance is about a 100 m. The Geographic South Pole (with the Ceremonial Pole in the background on the right)

... and a happy New Year!

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Sol 62 The turn of the year is kinda arbitrary here, since all time zones of Earth come together at South Pole. Nonetheless, since Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station runs on New Zealand time, we celebrate New Year's Eve at UTC +13. Yes, we are a day ahead of most of you guys! Josh, my new friend in fuel, and me [photo: Johannes Werthebach] The New Year's Eve party Dear human resources manager: I love America! [photo: Joshua Santos] Tony having his fortune read by Trotterdamus New Year's Eve party was held in the big gym. No need to go outside, since we are not allowed to burn any fireworks (which would probably not be very impressive in bright sunlight anyway). You think New Year's is boring without burning or melting stuff? Not at all! Two very special guests made an appearance that totally made up for not being able to play with flammables. One is the ancient, all-knowing Trotterdamus, who would tell you your 2018 fortune at almost no cost (but your soul, dohh). The other is the mysterious inflatable T-Rex, who makes unpredictable appearances every once in a while - no one knows when and where it will happen, and no one knows who he is in the real world. Some things are just meant to remain a mystery forever. The American flag being handed around towards its new location next to this season's geographic Pole marker The new Pole marker Wintersite manager Marco unveiling the new Pole marker South Pole Station is built on a gigantic glacier, which sloooowy makes its way towards the coast of Antarctica - about a couple of meters every year. That means it is moving away from the geographic South Pole inch by inch. As demanded by yearlong tradition, the geographic South Pole marker is relocated to it's new position relative to the station every January 1st. This is done in a big ceremony to which everybody is invited - not only station population, but everyone on site; including tourists camping out in the nearby tourist camp.

The marker is not only moved, but also replaced by a new design every year. Martin Wolf, one of last season's IceCube winterovers, came up with this year's design, and it's pretty awesome!

A grand display

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Sol 66 Josh in the middle of the most amazing atmospheric halo There is a lot of exciting things going on at South Pole, I learn new things and make new friends every single day. But today, something so breathtakingly beautiful happened that reminded me why I really wanted to come down here in the first place: To watch the sky.

Today I got to be the proud witness of a display that reveals itself only once, maybe twice a year, and only at a handful of the coldest of all places around the world. Simulation of the display, picture taken from [1]. The world's most insane sundogs [photo: Joshua Santos] Light refraction in ice crystals. Although the crystal plates are orientated differently, the refracted light rays are almost parallel. Picture taken from [1]. What you can see in the photos (that I took with my new wide-angle lens that came in with the mail after Christmas) is a combination of rare atmospheric halos, produced by ice crystals in Earth's upper atmosphere that reflect the sunlight in a very special way. Let's dig into this a little bit with the help of a book I found in the meteorology department; Atmospheric Halos by Walter Tape. The most basic sundogs - or parhelia - are formed by plate crystals as shown in the figure above. Although the crystals have very different orientations, the refracted rays of light behind them are nearly parallel, so that we see a concentration of light in the opposite direction. The more fancy halos are formed in a similar way by differently shaped crystals. The photos I took show two parhelia, a 22 ° and 46 ° halo, the upper tangent arc, the supralateral and circumzenith arcs, infralateral arcs and my favorite, the parthelic circle, which at one point during the show went aaaaall the way around the sky.

Crucial for this kind of display is the number and size of the ice crystals, their orientation and alignment, and the density of the crystal cloud. All these factors have to work together perfectly - that's why these halos are so incredibly rare! In order to take decent photographs of such solar phenomenons, you need to block off the sun itself - otherwise its brightness would overshine everything else. In my case, I used human sunblocks which turned out to work pretty well ;). Information and drawings taken from: [1] Walter Tape: Atmospheric Halos, American Geophysical Union, Washington D.C., 1994.

If you know me, you know my love for science and the joy I find in explaining things (which I tried above). And I don't think science diminishes the beauty of the moment at all - but this day again reminded me to take off science's safety goggles every once in a while, and to just sit there unspoiled, watch, and humbly appreciate the rare moments mother nature shares such gems with her children.

R&R in McMurdo

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Sol 79 The girl who dances with pizza I went on a 7-day vacation to McMurdo! Nothing to report, all I did was hanging out in our dorm eating pizza for a week. Also the occasional shower-beer.

... Just kidding! :D Although I have done the above things in a certainly unhealthy extent, I did go on a bunch of awesome adventures with my South Pole friends Luis, Tony, Ta-Lee and Cherisa; of which I want to narrate in this week's journal entry.

R&R stands for Rest and Recuperation and is basically a little beach vacation at the coast of Antarctica granted to everybody who winters at South Pole, as their last chance to see something else than the sterile interiour of Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and the big white nothingness it sits in. The destination of choice (or not-choice) is McMurdo Station - if you were following my blog for a while, you know I've already spend a couple of days there since it's the transit harbour for everybody on their way to Pole. McMurdo in high summer time These Adelie penguins are cleary up for shenanigans McMurdo Station in the summer time has everything you can possibly wish for when you just spent over 2 months at South Pole: A set of equally crazy, but different faces, a sea-level air pressure so you can actually hike without passing out, humidity, fauna, 24/7 pizza, and HUMIDITY. Also your face doesn't hurt when you go outside; the temperatures sometimes reach to a few degrees above freezing here! If you compare the above picture to the one I took in October, you can see that most of the snow in town has made way for a brownish-red combination of dirt and volcano ashes. How refreshing! Speaking of fauna: There are actual living animals at the coast of Antarctica; and I am not talking about that poor little moth they once found in a box of broccoli. See the photos below for all the species we encountered! :)

You might think penguins are a natural thing to be around in Antarctica, but at this time of year, when the sea ice is not completely broken up yet, you actually have to be pretty lucky to see them! So I am particularly proud of the picture on the right: Ta-Lee and I spotted 10 Adelie penguins on the sea ice in Winter Quarters Bay that wandered off pretty soon after we arrived, to mess with the seals you can see chillin' on their lazy butts in the background. For all the winterovers who did not get to see them: Don't be too sad; when penguins walk around on land, they are pretty much just drunk human adults, of which you can find one or two in McMurdo without having to go out to the ice shelf. A rare sight: Seal in action. Zero f*cks given by this skua in the smoking area A seal waving hello This Antarctic icefish is trying to eat my camera Visiting McMurdo is not only worth it for stalking wildlife, though. You can go on plenty of beautfiul hikes in the area - because in contrast to the plain white oblivion of South Pole, the coast has some actual landscape going on. Together with my R&R crew and fellow IceCuber Matt, I ventured to climb the famous mesa of Castle Rock - quite an advanced hike, but the view from up there is so breathtakingly beautiful, it makes you forget that you are sweating and freezing at the same time. Almost six hours full of amazing sceneries (some of which part of some serious bonding experiences) we spent hiking the icy wilderness of Ross Island; quietly shadowed by the magestic Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano on Earth. Wait what? Active volcano?? ... Calm down. Erebus has an open lava lake at its top, which means enough pressure in form of little eruptions is released every now and then to prevent a massive eruption of enough power to wipe out Winter Quarters Bay. So no need to evacuate McMurdo Station any time soon. ;) These emergency shelters are called 'apples'. I wonder why. Two hikers on their way to castle rock. You can see Mount Erebus erupting in the background! I hereby declare Antarctica the most beautiful continent on Earth Castle Rock: Looks like we are about to drop the hottest album of the year [photo: Cherisa Friedlaender] The gutsy fellowship climbing Castle Rock Me watching Boaty McBoatface doing its job [photo: Ta-Lee] Snow in Antarctica! [photo: Cherisa Friedlaender] McMurdo is a crowded place: Almost 800 people at this time of year (in contrast to about 150 at Pole)! Most of them live in two- or four-bed dorm rooms, which makes it feel a little bit like a school trip (thanks Cherisa for being such an awesome room mate!). Although that's a little scary at first, a big population comes with conveniences like a barber shop, a coffee house, bars, a variety of community activities, even a radio station! R&R people from South Pole seem to be a big hit in McMurdo - we got shout-outs on IceRadio at least four times! DJ Dennis, if you read this: You're awesome! :D

If you want to get away from the crowd, Hut Point right outside of town is the spot of choice. Not only does it feature a great view over Winter Quarters Bay, it's also home of Scott's Hut: An exact replica of the shelter that was built for Scott's expedition over a 100 years ago. Most of the exhibits in there are originals! The ice breaker in Winter Quarters Bay A peek inside Scott's Hut. The exhibits are originals from Scott's expedition over a hundred years ago! [photo: Ta-Lee] The ice breaker arrived in McMurdo this week. Very soon, the sea ice will be broken up completely, the bay will be alive with all kinds of sea animals, and the big cargo vessel will dock in McMurdo - the busiest time of the season. I will not be there to witness this; by the time hell breaks loose in McTown, I will be snuggled up in my own cozy, tiny set of walls, at the place I call home now - South Pole.

Ice Facts nō 9: Skua The bird who lent its name skuˑa /'skyo͡oə/, noun: A large brownish predatory seabird related to the gulls, pursuing other birds to make them disgorge fish they have caught.

[Google Dictionary] Also: skuˑa /'skyo͡oə/, noun: An abstract phenomenon describing the donation and repossession of everyday items predominantly on research stations in Antarctica; as well as the site of its implementation. [Poptart's Dictionary of Amusing and Inappropriate American Colloquial] Or, let me put this differently: If you have stuff you don't want anymore or you have to get rid of excess luggage for your way home, you put it in Skua. Be it an old towel, an open box of Ibuprofen, smelly sportswear or that tacky multicolored chain of Christmas lights that someone installed in your room before you moved in - Skua takes it all. At Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Skua is a little shack right outside the side entrance, where people put their old stuff for happy finders to take. And this system works - it works so extraordinarily good, that some bold summer people come down here without any extra clothes of their own, with Skua as their wardrobe for the entire stay. Skua got its name from the famous Antarctic seabird, which is known for its tendency to 'borrow' food from other animals or unsuspecting residents of McMurdo Station who dare to step outside with a tray full of pizza and Frosty Boy. The Skua Shak at South Pole Inside the Skua Shak I found these in Skua! Can you believe that? Someone skua'd a single Q-tip to medical Skua. That's my kind of humor.

Hello WWU Münster!

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Sol 92 My favorite work group back in my favorite city! I want to dedicate this week's journal entry to my IceCube team at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität (WWU) in Münster, who helped me so much in fulfilling my dream of going to the South Pole. You guys rock! Before I came here, I worked on the mDOM, the Multi-PMT Digital Optical Module for the future IceCube-Gen2 experiment, together with the guys from AG Kappes which was newly founded in 2016 and soon developed to be the best work group in the world! Those guys made me the most awesome going-away gift: A calendar with a page for every month I'll be here, each holding a picture of them re-enacting a funny scene from all my favorite movies. Maybe I'll share some of those with you over the next months! :D

South Pole's Micro-Wildlife

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Sol 96 An Antarctic flamingo having a smoke in the berms You thought South Pole was a place most hostile to life in every way? Not at all! After all those McMurdo wildlife pictures I showed you earlier last month, I think it's time now to present what Pole has to offer. Because if you look close enough, you find all kinds of fauna lurking and creeping in and around South Pole Station. This journal entry is dedicated to the creatures that only those with a keen eye can see. A tiny flamingo nesting in the coat room Admittedly, most of the animals found here are most likely not native to South Pole. Allan the sock monkey, for example, is believed to live a nomadic life with the Traverse people. Legend says that the sturgeon in the ice tunnels is originally from Russia, and the creepy monkey in the office obviously crashed its UFO at South Pole at some point. The T-Rex magically showed up this very season, and nobody knows who is behind his sudden appearance (chrmchrrm, Zane).

There also is one species that visits South Pole quite frequently, and in contrast to all the other creatures, you don't have to try hard to find it - in fact, sometimes it's really difficult NOT to run into at least one specimen of this kind on your way from the lab to the bathroom: Tourists. They come back every summer season when it apparently gets so hot in the Northern hemisphere, that it's worth about 75 grant to breathe ice-cold South Pole air for literally one day. Anyways, occasionally you get to meet a famous person in Amundsen-Scott's hallways (because those are usually the ones with that kind of money). Allan, the sock, chiznillin' in da chiznhood A rare sight: Penguins at South Pole There's a whole story of how this sturgeon ended up in the ice tunnels... ... in the company of tiny creatures. The story behind the sturgeon in the ice tunnels has as many versions as there are people telling it, and every single one of them is probably true. So far, I think this is what happened:

A long, long time ago, the Russian station Vostok located at about 72° South on the Antarctic Plateau, presented the sturgeon to McMurdo station as a gift. The McTownies, suspicious as they are, did not dare to eat it - so it ended up in one of their cold storage buildings where it slept for years and years. But then, one lucky day, a McMurdo supply worker found it and thought it was funny to guard-mail it down to South Pole station in one of the last aircrafts of the season, so that the Polies would not have a chance to send it back. After all those years the poor fish did not meet the galley safety standards any more, so that season's winterovers decided to honor it's endurances with the highest (or lowest) of all graves: A shrine in the ice tunnels. Someone lost his gerbil in the hallways. Also, that guy. Me, casually meeting Astronaut Terry Virts in the hallway. Yes, it's really him! [photo: Dr. Rich Harper] Dinosaurs at South Pole! I guess the flat earthers were right after all...

Science Facts nō 4: The IceCube Laboratory The IceCube Lab at South Pole I guess it's about time to talk about my actual job a little bit again. But before I tell you what exactly it is that I do (because I like messing with people who keep asking me that exact question ;)), let me show you my workspace!

The IceCube Laboratory, or short ICL, is located in the Dark Sector (I know, right?!) about a kilometer away from Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. It marks the center point of the IceCube detector which is buried under 1.5 km of ice. All the hundreds of miles of cables that IceCube consists of come together in this little building. Those arm-thick cables enter the ICL through the two large cable towers you can see in the picture above, and are split up inside into smaller red quad cables which each are connected to four DOMs deep down in the ice; their other ends are connected to the DOMHubs, custom-made computers that feed high voltage to the sensors and read their data in return. We've got 97 of those!

All the other machines (we've got a total of about 200!) are data processing or infrastructure machines, that means they filter and pre-analyse the data, they host important resources like repositories, mail accounts, or the detector monitoring system, or are responsible for the Iridium connection that lets the winterovers communicate with the North during satellite outages. The DOMHub racks The afternoon sun is shining through the server room windows The galleyslide for our IceCube Open House. Sweet! So yes, the essence of IceCube is housed in the little blue building in the middle of nowhere - it's cozy, and the noise of all the machines has a somewhat soothing effect on me by now. The dog house, the little blue cube on the roof, is a perfect get-away when you need a break from life on station. I'd spend way more time out there, if the ICL would feature a bathroom with running water... Fun fact: The ICL is the only building at South Pole that has to be actively cooled. For that purpose the outside air is sucked in, heated up (yes, we're at the South Pole), and blown into the server room. If the air conditioning shuts down for only 20 minutes, the exhaust heat of our computers heats the server room up to almost 60° C - which can be fatal for all kinds of expensive equipment in there! That's why we monitor the temperature very closely with dozens of sensors.

Of Tanker Toasts and Fuelie Fingers

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Sol 102 Me parking a Hercules [photo: Johannes Werthebach] Diesel is expensive at South Pole Fighting the immediate urge to stumble backwards, I wave my arms towards the approaching monstrum in front of me, signalling it to keep going, as I try to hold my current position just a little longer. The spinning propellers could easily atomize a snowmobile, not to mention a tiny fuelie in a big red. I can feel the low BRRRRRRRRMMMMMMM of the throttling engines in my stomach as I draw a big X in the air, signalling the pilot to halt. "Comms comms, this is flight deck: Skier 93 is parked in fuel pit one!" I am pressing the headphones against my ears as I yell the words into my radio, over the sound of the four idling rotors of the LC-130 that is now sitting no 20 meters away from me in the fuel pit. The ice-cold wind that is blowing in my face does not make it easier to write down the Hercule's arrival time in the log book. Now: Get the nozzle, connect it to the hose, grab the bonding cable and wait for the loadmaster to wave you over! I've done this a dozen times, but I am still repeating the steps in my head to not forget anything.

As the Air Guard officer finally gives me the sign, I start walking slowly towards him; the bonding cable in my one hand and the nozzle with the green hose over my shoulder. This is the most exciting part, but at the same time very exhausting and sort of horrifying - the hose is heavy and awkward as shit, and hauling it under the Herc's wing, where the propellers blow their exhaust directly in your face, is really scary. Although admittedly, I might be a few inches too short to actually get decapitated by the spinning razor blades, but god knows I'm not gonna take my chances with this one! And now we wait. Pumping 3000 gallons of fuel off a Hercules takes quite some time, in which you merely stand on the windy flight deck to wait for the loadmaster's hand signals, and to overlook the situation - a leaky pipe or spill during the procedure can have devastating consequences! Climbing and dipping tanks is part of a fuelie's everyday life [photo: Joshua Montgomery] These photos are too badass to only have one of them [photo: Johannes Werthebach] Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station relies on the tanker flights - most our fuel get's here with the overland Traverse, but nowhere near all of it. Now, towards the end of the summer season, we get up to five Hercules full of AN-8 every 24 hours - and my fellow fuelie Justin and I have been working the night shifts in the last couple of weeks. My pocket watch says: Almost 3 in the morning. Sunlight is reflecting off the aircraft's cockpit windows. The fuel chapel is all pretty for the Tanker Flight Toast The five fuelies are celebrating a successfull summer season [photo: Justin Lilly] Papa fuel Seth, fuelie smurf Raffi and fuelie smurf Josh after a long day of working tanker flights [photo: Robin Standish] "Comms comms, this is fuels: Skier 93 is preparing to taxi. Total gallons received is 2907. Again: 2-9-0-7. Do you copy?" Finally, the last tanker of the day is successfully defueled and about to depart South Pole Station airfield. Tired and kind of sore I am falling on the couch in the fuel barn - also called the fuel chapel, where we are gonna celebrate the nearing end of the summer fueling season tomorrow. The Tanker Toast is a tradition among the McMurdo fuelies, and was adapted at South Pole as the Tanker Flight Toast - in which the fuels chapel gets doused with Champagne. I've been a lot more involved in fuels activities than I expected. When I first volunteered for the job, I thought I was gonna marshall the last Herc and test a fuel sample every now and then - and look where I am now! I fueled and defueled over 20 aircrafts, did tank transfers, helped with offloading the Traverse, and became winter fuels team lead! It's a lot of work, but I am incredibly happy about this opportunity - where else in the world would I ever have the chance of doing all that? I love South Pole!

Ice Facts nō 10: The Run to McMurdo The distance from South Pole to McMurdo is 835 miles, measured on the way of the Traverse. The Run to McMurdo challenges you to cover this distance within the 9 winter months - virtually on the treadmill, the stationary bike, on skies, the unicycle or whatever weird form of mobility you can come up with. Now the fun part. I have a little bet going with our research associate Ta-Lee: Whoever makes it to McMurdo first, gets to dress the other person for a week. Yes, FOR A WHOLE WEEK. Everything faster than 5 miles per hour on the treadmill counts. By the way, running at 3300 m elevation and zero humidity is a lot harder than you think. The extra air you need for exercise: Just not there. The Run to McMurdo sign-up sheet. Mikey, our cook, is killing it. Me trying to take a selfie, and Ta-Lee on the treadmill trying to keep up with my mileage

WINTER. IS. HERE.

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Sol 117 The flight deck will now be deserted for the next 9 months. {center}"Comms, comms, this is flight deck: Otter CKB is off deck. Again: Charlie-Kilo-Bravo is off deck!" That's it. We're alone. The last aircraft of the season, a Twinotter on its way home to Canada, departed Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station airfield. We sent them off with 700 gallons of jet fuel and a doggie bag full of cookies - hoping for them not to return for the next nine months. Because if they would, that would mean we're in big trouble. South Pole is isolated for the winter season which lasts from Mid-February till beginning of November. During this time, nobody can get here, and nobody can leave. Period. However, it happened a few times in the past that someone on station was diagnosed with a bad-enough condition so that they had to be "med-evac'd" (evacuated for medical reasons). That's an endeavour that not only costs a fortune, but also takes several weeks, depends on perfect weather conditions, and requires everybody on station to work together flawlessly - and there is no guarantee for success.

But don't worry: Every winterover underwent very thourough medical screenings prior to deployment to make the event of a med-evac as unlikely as possible. Also, we have a very capable crew in the sickbay - I trust my life to our doctor Malcolm and his assistant Brent. Tradition demands that all three "The Thing" movies are being watched the night after Station Closing. Mom sent me 40 "Kinder Eggs" to give to the other winterovers - it's totally working for our supply specialist Travis and our research associate Ta-Lee Rather than the fear of getting sick, there is another paranoia that has been spreading among the 40 winterovers lately: Rumor has it that The Thing is back on station - an ancient alien creature that has been waiting for its awakening in the ice; to infect, imitate, and kill the station population. Slowly, silently. One by one. Luckily, we still have 24 hours of sunlight every day, which keeps the my-fellow-winterover-is-possessed-by-alien-parasites-panic down a little. For now. Station Closing comes with another important event: The start of the Run to McMurdo, which is explained below. You can keep track of my progress in all my posts from now on. Run Raffi run! Mileage: 6.26

That's no moon

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Sol 124 That's no moon... it's a space station. Oh wait, it's actually the moon. Or is it? The moon is up! For those who never thought about it or missed Robert Schwarz's last Tuesday's astronomy class: Here, the moon is down for two weeks and then up for two weeks in a row, and it's really pretty in South Pole's clear air - except when it's not. Winter comes with more frequent whiteouts, and temperatures have been dropping significantly lately. -100° F (-73° C) with windchill are not uncommon any more. South Pole described in a single picture. "F*ck this!" said the windmill and deserted to Spain. Wind: 1, Zane: 0. The proud winners of this week's Trivia round! As working outside becomes more uncomfortable with every day closer to sunset, the winterovers try to make their station as cozy as possible. The galley is now basically a big lounge, people started to put up hammocks in the B2 science lab, and Carhardt overalls are slowly but steady swapped for pyjama pants. Most outside activities, like frozen kickball and frisbee golf, are replaced by Trivia nights and station-wide games of Assassins and Werewolf, where a mysterious murderer - or "Thingatourwolf" - kills a person every night and watches people turn on each other in oblivion as population is slowly shrinking. Fun times. Mileage: 21.61

Science Facts nō 5: Solar shenanigans The Earth's rotation axis is tilted about 23.5°. To understand what's going on in this week's science facts, you need the following vocabulary: Solstices happen twice a year; they are defined as the days the sun reaches it's respectively highest (in the summer) or lowest (in the winter) altitudes in the sky. Equinoxes are the two days of the year when day and night are of exactly the same length. At the poles, the equinoxes are the moments of sunrise and sunset. Earth's rotation axis is tilted about 23.5° relative to the perpendicular to its plane of movement around the sun. That's the reason for seasons on our planet! It's also the reason for night and day at South Pole - if the axis wasn't tilted, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station would be at the edge of dawn year round. But because things are how they are, we get one long day and one long night. The ostensible movement of the sun across the South Pole sky is illustrated in the picture below: It basically draws big circles seemingly without change in altitude every "day", with those circles slowly moving towards or away from the horizon. The sun's highest point in the sky is at summer solstice and measures 23.5° from the horizon, which equals the tilt of Earth's rotation axis - makes sense, doesn't it? It's hard to wrap your head around it at first, but maybe it helps to look at how the sun "moves" right at the equator: It rises and sets exactly perpendicular to the horizon every day of the year, with its highest altitude at the zenith straight above your head on the equinoxes, and its lowest altitude about 66.5° (= 90° - 23.5°) either from the north or south horizon on the solstices. The ostensible movement of the sun across the sky as viewed from Münster (left), the equator (middle), and the South Pole (right). Poorly drawn and simplified. The polar day therefore is equivalent to the polar summer, as the polar night is to the polar winter. The nicest consequence of all this: Sunrise and sunset both seem to take about a week! If the weather is not shitty (which it might be according to our meteorologist Janelle) I'll show you some awesome photos next week. Fun fact: The average time of daylight per 24 hours is exactly 12 hours for EVERY place on Earth, even the Poles. It makes sense if you think about it! :)

That's also no moon

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Sol 136 Shiny clouds over South Pole Last time I told you about what the moon is up to - I figured this time you might be interested in what the sun is doing at South Pole right now. And let me tell you, it's all kinds of shenanigans!

Official equinox is next Wednesday, around 5 am local time. That means the sun is pretty low already, and it's noticeably darker around here. Sunset comes with all kinds of pretty sights, and I started to drag my camera around with me wherever I go. And that's rewarded with some pretty neat shots! These are my favorites :) The sun vs. the station exhaust My favourite animals: Sundogs. More pretty clouds If you're curious about how the sun works here at South Pole: I picked a few things up in Robert Schwarz's last week's astronomy class. Click this: Science facts #5. Mileage: 88.34

Fiddle-di-dou!

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Sol 138 Over the course of the last months, I was being introduced to all kinds of American culture. By now I think it's fair to say that most of it is about food and booze - like in every other country. And the Americans have a special history in deep-frying things. All kinds of things. If, however, a particular holiday does not, for some reason, dictate the consumption of deep-fried food, they come up with other sorts of crazy things, like brutally over-sugared beverages, hopelessly over-frosted cake or a ridiculous-inflationary usage of food dye. But don't get me wrong - I love it! Except maybe the sugary drinks, I really can't warm up to that stuff. Burghs. The two bar tenders Mikey and Dan fighting over which one of them has the greenest temporary shamrock tattoo on their butt cheeks The mysterious T-Rex decided to celebrate Saint Paddie's day with us! [photo: Probably Ta-Lee, he doesn't remember] Anyways, Saint Patrick's Day is no exception. I've never had green beer ever before in my life - and now I know why! :D In our bartender's defence: They did not have particularly great beer to begin with, so dying it green wasn't gonna make it A LOT worse. Our machinist Steele made this sweet mute for my fiddle. It has my name and a little engraving of the continent on it! It may sound like I am making fun of my American friends - and that's absolutely not wrong. But only because I love them so much! :) Honestly I think Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station has not seen a winterover crew like this ever before. Everyone knows wintering at South Pole is my dream - but this particular bunch of crazy individuals makes it so much better than I expected!

Speaking of great people: Our machinist Steele (oh yes, that's really his name) made me the most awesome mute for my fiddle! I started self-learning last Wednesday, and ever since I was horribly afraid of being lynched by basically everybody who lives in B1 (if that actually happens, the suspects are Travis, Ta-Lee, and Josh). But now that I have my mute I can safely practice in my room whenever I want. Sadly I wasn't able to perform at Paddie's Day, but be prepared for a big concert at Midwinter! Tickets are free! Mileage: 92.07

From dusk till dawn

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Sol 146 Scenes like these make me realize how much the newest Star Wars movie sucks Sometimes, when all hope seems to be lost, a single sunbeam can restore a winterover's faith in the universe. Literally.

The few days after winter equinox at South Pole are said to be the prettiest - unless they are shadowed by the biggest snow storm of the season so far. Wind speeds of 36 knots mean instant frostbite to any tiny little patch of exposed skin; they also mean zero visibility due to blowing ice crystals everywhere. Normally, I like this kind of weather, when you can not tell the difference between right and left, up and down; and the Japanese flag at the Ceremonial Pole marker appears as a single red dot floating in the air. But this week, I very much don't like to be in a "giant pingpong ball" as our meteorologists call it. It's the week of sunset, and that's really not something you want to miss. After all, it's gonna be the first and last for my entire stay here. Sunset Dinner. Embrace the dark! Most of the sunset we spent inside a giant, windy pingpong ball [photo: Ta-Lee] So yeah, of course the weather was shitty during the entire week. The storm raged non-stop for five days after the winter equinox, so everybody basically gave up hope on seeing the sunset. The sun is visible at Pole for several days AFTER it set - or rather it's reflection in the atmosphere, so you can not really predict when the sun will be visible for the last time. Also, if you're lucky, you can witness a phenomena called the green flash - a line of green light right above the setting sun generated by refraction in the atmosphere, usually visible for a glimpse of a second if at all, but which at South Pole can last for several minutes or even hours.

Anyways, after five days, it was pretty unlikely that the sun would show up again even if the sky would clear up. Which it, in fact, did. I woke up on Sunday morning to the most beautiful play of colors across the sky - the pictures you can see below don't come even close. The sunset reflected in the Ceremonial Pole marker This is what it can look like if the universe doesn't hate you So I grabbed my camera and my ECW and basically spent the whole morning outside, once again realizing that coming down here was the rightest decision I've ever made. Just sitting there and enjoying the breathtakingly beautiful display - until I frostnipped my butt. Again. Totally worth it. The sun setting over the berms. I'm so glad I bought this wide-angle camera lens. All disappointment about our "short" sunset immediately vanished upon being seated to the most amazing South Pole Sunset Dinner. A fantastic seven-course meal, prepared by the best galley crew ever, accompanied by a selection of our finest wines, totally made up for everything spectacular that we might have missed out on. After all, we will get another chance - at sunrise in eight months. Mileage: 124.10 Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station: Get ready for the longest night on Earth

Ice Facts nō 11: South Pole Sectors The South Pole sectors. The area around Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is divided into a bunch of sectors; a few of them you can see in the picture on the right. Those sectors are mostly for protecting the science experiments that are going on down here. The Dark Sector is home of the IceCube Laboratory (ICL), the Dark Sector Laboratory (DSL) which hosts the South Pole Telescope and BICEP, and the Martin A. Pomerantz Observatory (MAPO) building which hosts the KECK experiment. In terms of visible light, the Dark Sector is as dark as any other sector - in terms of other frequencies, however, special rules apply to this sector to avoid interference with the very sensitive experiments. For example, your radio has to be off at all times, your phone has to be in airplane mode, and all bluetooth and WIFI devices should better be left at home. You are allowed to use your radio in case of an emergency, of course. The Clean Air Sector is home of the Atmospheric Research Observatory (ARO), which is where the two NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmosphe