The month of March was dominated by one simple fact: the sun was setting and it wouldn’t come back for a long while. Now that the sun has firmly set, the tagline on my newsletter “where the nightlife never ends” is finally apropos.
It also was my 32nd birthday. I spent the early parts of March planning my menu; my birthday fell on a Sunday and typically on Sunday it is leftover day with the small kitchen staff getting a much needed day off. However, I wanted to have a great birthday meal and used the excuse to plan an epic vegan brunch. I drew from my favorite vegan cookbooks: Veganomicon and Vegan with A Vengeance. My colleague at the telescope, Amy, offered to help cook, as did one of the meteorologists. Both have great experience cooking so I was happy to take them up on it. Menu planning at the pole, cooking for 48 people with limited supplies, means planning a meal, and all of the necessary ingredients for it, at least two weeks in advance so that the materials staff can source the ingredients from the station warehouses.
Early in the month, Casey let me know I could open a new present from him, and I discovered it was a (faux fur) hat! This was very helpful, as the temperatures were dropping. I was forced to move to a new balaclava (not cotton but rather synthetic) and put on extra layers. Still things were manageable.
We’ve been having a series of false fire alarms due to a set of faulty sensors, that were replaced, but apparently the replacement parts had been through enough environmental damage that they as well were no longer good. We had another in the middle of the night, and all of the emergency response teams responded. The good news is that these alarms are useful for our monthly response drill. But that coupled with the fact that every other week, I’m on call to be first responder to issues on the telescope, means that I’m extra thankful for a full night’s sleep, whenever that occurs.
Finally on March 13, I cooked my birthday brunch! It was well attended and people generally came back for seconds. My friend and talented artist Leigh Cox drew the invite flier:
The one thing I was missing was cupcake liners, so when the cupcakes stuck to the pan, I had to be creative to serve them moderately mangled but still appetizing.
I had a great birthday, talked with my mom on the phone, and Skyped with Casey (we have limited video Skype capabilities and must sign up to do so). When he sang me happy birthday I couldn’t hold back tears. He also gave me a hand-designed 3D printed silver medal (which I later mounted on a chain to wear as a necklace) with Antarctica on the front and the Milky Way on the back, both in novel projections.
Check it out!
Check out my interview with WGLC 100.1 Classic Country on the “Hot & Cold – Kevin&Charles in the Morning” show.
We had no major issues with the telescope in March, and on March 22 I met with members of the SPT collaboration to start some scientific analysis work on top of my daily telescope duties. I’ll be looking at ways to find galaxy clusters in the SPT data. In Medical Emergency response team training, we learned how to take X-rays and how our “walking blood bank” functioned. Here is an X-ray of one of my cameras!:
Craft wise, I learned how to make a patch on our sewing machine. I continued doing yoga twice a week in our excellent class, and tried to make running more entertaining by watching a movie. I watched the movie Whiplash, about the intense environment and struggle of a young jazz musician, while running. The film was great, but ultimately I decided to stick to running shorter distances (1 mile at a time) and get my exercise in other ways (skating, rowing, yoga, weight lifting to name a few). Here’s yoga class in the gym:
The sun was slowly setting, but I had plenty of time to take pictures of its last light.
Or so I thought, until whiteout conditions prevailed shortly before the expected time of sunset. The sun’s exact time of setting depends on atmospheric conditions which can bend the light our way long after the sun had technically set. So we had no idea when the whiteout started whether we’d ever (for the next 6 months anyway) see the sun again.
Luckily on March 23, the sky cleared and everyone gathered to watch the last of the sun. I can confirm that the green (and even the blue) flash is real! I saw the former with my naked eye; it lasts much longer here, and the latter with the aid of a telescope. Luckily, unlike Newton, I did not burn my eyes. One laser eye surgery is enough. This night was full of excitement as many stayed up late to get their last fill of the sun and to try to get some great photographs.
On March 24 the moon rose, and it was dark enough to see the massive orb clearly, and a very beautiful taste of what wonders the long night sky could bring.
To celebrate Sunset we watched the zombie horror film “30 days of night” about a remote Alaskan town infested by Zombies and unable to communicate after the sun sets for 30 days. Luckily we have seen no zombies as of yet (knock on wood). On March 26 we had a station formal dinner to celebrate sunset. Many people dressed in their finest, and the kitchen staff made an impressive meal of 3 courses plus dessert, with a menu and volunteers to help serve and clean. We used finer china than our typical plates, and rearranged the galley to have long communal tables festively decorated. It was a great station bonding experience.
To prepare for the increasing darkness, flag lines had been placed to all the far away buildings, including the Dark Sector Laboratory (DSL) the building in which my telescope is operated from. While there was still a bit of light our emergency response team took a tour of the communications sector and the dark sector, so that we could learn how best to get there in case of emergency in the darker days.
In addition the dark sector, which includes three buildings housing the SPT, IceCube, Keck and BICEP experiments, had an open house for the station, and we had a great attendance of people from a variety of professions on station to show them the science we are doing and give them a picture of our day to day work. Here is a picture of me in the IceCube server room, a neutrino experiment which needs a huge amount of computing power:
Check it out!
That’s about it for March. Stay tuned for April, in which I see my first auroras! I’ve been honing my night photography, so the photos will definitely be a highlight, I hope!
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