9-5-12
Around 10pm, I was all snuggled up warm in my bed, going through some photos on my laptop while finishing up a movie before we were to go to bed, when all of a sudden my phone rang. It was Brenden who wintered over and who I knew from last year bc he used to play basketball with me on night shift. He was also working on his masters in aeronautical engineering at CU and working for that group full of chinese guys from CU (weng tao, zhibin, and wangho) that I got along well with being that they were buffs fans and liked how I would practice my chinese with them. Anyways, this was a case where being a buff fan, being good friends with the Chinese bc of my travels, and organizing nightshift basketball games really paid off.
So anyways, he calls me up and said to be outside my dorm in 10 minutes with my warm weather gear. He and wangho picked me up in their truck and took me up to arrival heights. Arrival heights is a place of particulary important scientific interest, so you are not allowed to go their without a permit, so really no one from town can go there, well except for shuttle drivers. Shuttle drivers can go bc we needed to drive these researchers up to arrival heights. Arrival heights is awesome bc it's the highest place you can go with a vehicle in McMurdo and it has stunning views. The project up there is a LIDAR project with CIRES at the Univ. of Colorado. Basically, they are studying the upper atmosphere with a huge powerful laser (if you put your hand by it, it would burn it off. They demonstrated it with paper for me). I had gotten the tour last year of the place by wengtao and Zhibin, but not while it was running.
So they drove me up to arrival heights and as soon as we left the lights of town, stretched out before us was an amazing dancing Aurora australis! Up at arrival heights we stood outside and watched the aurora. You can watch it move and dance and change intensity. Sometimes it gets really strong, and other times it gets quite dim.
We then went inside and started up their laser. They gave me a very in-depth tour. Then while the laser was busy collecting data, we just hung out and talked and from time to time when we had warmed up, we would go outside to check out how the aurora had changed.
There project is basically studing elemental composition of the upper atmosphere from roughtly 2km up to 200km (the start of outer space). One of the things you can do when you are shooting off electrons at Iron molecules in the atmosphere is determine the temperature. There are these thick layers of air way high up in the atmosphere that have a stable temperature--that is, they remain the same temperature year roun. Something to do with air's density and particles in the air. Well, this project at CU has been going on for over 30 years and one of the interesting side things they have discovered in their quest to study the composition of the upper atmosphere is that these layers of air have warmed nearly a degree ever several years. Yet another huge sign of a global climate change.
It started to get late, and I had to work the next day (they stay up all night as this is the best time for their laser), so around 1am I had them take me down. I had been sleeping for a couple hours when my pager went off around 3am. It was Ildi (remember Ildi, the one who helped me get this job in Antarcitca last year?). She's on nightshift right now, and when I called her back, she yelled into the phone, "check outside. There's an aurora and it's F**king amazing." So I walked out of my dorm in my boxers (it was about -15F) and checked it out, and it was amazing, and the reason I knew this was bc I could see it in town even with all the lights. So I hurried and put on all my ECW (extreme cold weather) gear and head out to hut point. I ran into Ildi halfway there as she was working by the old incinerator. She had a huge smile on her face (as she always does) and gave me a big hug. I then headed out to hut point where I could watch the aurora dance over McMurdo town and over the sea ice.
9-7
It got pretty cold today. -24F with a windchill down to -51, but I was actually outside a lot today, well alot for me as a "lab rat". I am signed up to be a volunteer hut guide for Scott's hut, and we had training today, which involved walking out to Hut Point and getting a tour and guide info session.
After that I had Delta refresher training. Delta's are the huge wheeled passenger vehicles I drove last year. I have also volunteered to be a driver for Rec trips. Shuttle Queen "trained" me, though it was more like us just driving around for an hour talking since obviously I remembered how to drive them since it was my job last year. It made me miss shuttles bc we drove up over the pass and down to scott base and the views of the royal society were just outstanding. I miss driving around and seeing all the scenery. It was so cold, even in the Delta that Queen's eyelashes got these cool frost and ice crystals on them. It made her eyes look really cool.
This afternoon there was an absolutely gorgeous sunset/sunrise. The sun now briefly rises in the afternoon, but stays near the horizon for a huge portion of the day, so we have a nearly day-long sunrise/sunset which is amazingly beautiful!
Around 10pm, I was all snuggled up warm in my bed, going through some photos on my laptop while finishing up a movie before we were to go to bed, when all of a sudden my phone rang. It was Brenden who wintered over and who I knew from last year bc he used to play basketball with me on night shift. He was also working on his masters in aeronautical engineering at CU and working for that group full of chinese guys from CU (weng tao, zhibin, and wangho) that I got along well with being that they were buffs fans and liked how I would practice my chinese with them. Anyways, this was a case where being a buff fan, being good friends with the Chinese bc of my travels, and organizing nightshift basketball games really paid off.
So anyways, he calls me up and said to be outside my dorm in 10 minutes with my warm weather gear. He and wangho picked me up in their truck and took me up to arrival heights. Arrival heights is a place of particulary important scientific interest, so you are not allowed to go their without a permit, so really no one from town can go there, well except for shuttle drivers. Shuttle drivers can go bc we needed to drive these researchers up to arrival heights. Arrival heights is awesome bc it's the highest place you can go with a vehicle in McMurdo and it has stunning views. The project up there is a LIDAR project with CIRES at the Univ. of Colorado. Basically, they are studying the upper atmosphere with a huge powerful laser (if you put your hand by it, it would burn it off. They demonstrated it with paper for me). I had gotten the tour last year of the place by wengtao and Zhibin, but not while it was running.
So they drove me up to arrival heights and as soon as we left the lights of town, stretched out before us was an amazing dancing Aurora australis! Up at arrival heights we stood outside and watched the aurora. You can watch it move and dance and change intensity. Sometimes it gets really strong, and other times it gets quite dim.
We then went inside and started up their laser. They gave me a very in-depth tour. Then while the laser was busy collecting data, we just hung out and talked and from time to time when we had warmed up, we would go outside to check out how the aurora had changed.
There project is basically studing elemental composition of the upper atmosphere from roughtly 2km up to 200km (the start of outer space). One of the things you can do when you are shooting off electrons at Iron molecules in the atmosphere is determine the temperature. There are these thick layers of air way high up in the atmosphere that have a stable temperature--that is, they remain the same temperature year roun. Something to do with air's density and particles in the air. Well, this project at CU has been going on for over 30 years and one of the interesting side things they have discovered in their quest to study the composition of the upper atmosphere is that these layers of air have warmed nearly a degree ever several years. Yet another huge sign of a global climate change.
It started to get late, and I had to work the next day (they stay up all night as this is the best time for their laser), so around 1am I had them take me down. I had been sleeping for a couple hours when my pager went off around 3am. It was Ildi (remember Ildi, the one who helped me get this job in Antarcitca last year?). She's on nightshift right now, and when I called her back, she yelled into the phone, "check outside. There's an aurora and it's F**king amazing." So I walked out of my dorm in my boxers (it was about -15F) and checked it out, and it was amazing, and the reason I knew this was bc I could see it in town even with all the lights. So I hurried and put on all my ECW (extreme cold weather) gear and head out to hut point. I ran into Ildi halfway there as she was working by the old incinerator. She had a huge smile on her face (as she always does) and gave me a big hug. I then headed out to hut point where I could watch the aurora dance over McMurdo town and over the sea ice.
9-7
It got pretty cold today. -24F with a windchill down to -51, but I was actually outside a lot today, well alot for me as a "lab rat". I am signed up to be a volunteer hut guide for Scott's hut, and we had training today, which involved walking out to Hut Point and getting a tour and guide info session.
After that I had Delta refresher training. Delta's are the huge wheeled passenger vehicles I drove last year. I have also volunteered to be a driver for Rec trips. Shuttle Queen "trained" me, though it was more like us just driving around for an hour talking since obviously I remembered how to drive them since it was my job last year. It made me miss shuttles bc we drove up over the pass and down to scott base and the views of the royal society were just outstanding. I miss driving around and seeing all the scenery. It was so cold, even in the Delta that Queen's eyelashes got these cool frost and ice crystals on them. It made her eyes look really cool.
This afternoon there was an absolutely gorgeous sunset/sunrise. The sun now briefly rises in the afternoon, but stays near the horizon for a huge portion of the day, so we have a nearly day-long sunrise/sunset which is amazingly beautiful!
2 comments:
How do you get so lucky? I guess a lot of people miss out on some amazing things when they prefer warmth and sleep (comfort) rather than to experience something potentially really cool.
haha, yea. I do see and experience a lot of sweet stuff, by suffering a bit and taking risks. But as I read somewhere. "With great risk comes great reward" sometimes I have to tell myself this when I am pushing some limits of mental strength or physical strength or tiredness or something
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