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his newsletter I’ll merge April and May. The days in these months started to merge together somewhat, due to the routine of living in a station in the middle of a beautifully desolate continent slowly approaching the dead of winter. To start things off here is an Iridium flare I caught on camera:
April began with April Fools. There were some funny pranks. A prankster who specialized in pranking some of the senior people on station was pranked himself late in the day when he went to buy a bottle of wine in the store. Under extreme circumstances, the store can cut you off from buying any alcohol. He was cut off and told to have a meeting with his boss’ manager ASAP. After a stern meeting the manager said “Do you know what you should take away from this … Don’t screw with the oldest guys on station.”
Check it out!: some of my higher resolution astrophotography is available here https://www.flickr.com/photos/corbett/sets/72157668228500630
The South Pole was asked by the White House (via the NSF) to participate in International Jazz Day. We got together every musician on station and began practicing a rendition of “Summertime”. I was recruited to play the cello which I’ve been learning off and on for a while. Practice sessions were really fun.
The sun was gone at this stage, but dusk was still falling. I could see well enough that me and a friend, an IceCube winterover, decided to finally take a cross country skiing trip. We skied out to the RF sector, where the communications equipment of the station is housed. Although the boots were not well insulated, we didn’t get too cold, but skiing on the rough ice wasn’t an extremely enjoyable endeavor.
I spent some time reconfiguring my room and found a nice shelf. I started a “Learn to Draw in 30 Days” book, though I intend to take much more than 30 days. On the 9th of April, we got a special version of the new Star Wars, released by Disney with a watermark indicating it was exclusively for Antarctica. Many have been “on continent” since it was released and hadn’t seen it. We had a giant screening in the gym which was much appreciated. Apparently this came about because of an Antarctica Reddit user’s lament. If someone has connections at HBO, it’d be awesome if the same could just-so-happen-to-happen with Game of Thrones. We aren’t officially allowed to solicit media though. So it’s not like I’m asking…
April 10th we had a Yuri’s Night event; an international celebration of space. The party was fun and had a lot of cool costumes. It was our first real winter party.
Soon after, I began to learn more about aurora photography. We didn’t know when the auroras would arrive, but they certainly would soon. All the station windows were by this point covered. Light pollution is minimized, meaning that in addition to living in darkness, we don’t even look out the window at it. This helps several optical aurora experiments get the best data. Window coverings are artistic and home brewed. In mid-April I saw my first Auroras and I was hooked. They show up better in photos than real life, but I was to see a variety to come that rivaled any photos. They move and scintillate.
Dr. Pepper is in short supply at the station store, and the volunteer employees finally got tired of managing heavy demand. They decided to have a fire sale, and there was a line out the door! I attended even though I don’t usually drink much soda. I was happy to get 6 Dr. Pepper sodas.
On April 17 we spent all day recording Summertime for the International Jazz Festival after many days of practice. I had been enjoying doing yoga twice a week, as one of the materials personal is trained as a yoga teacher and volunteers to teach an extremely high quality class. I have also been meditating for 15 minutes in the greenhouse each day and in April I achieved 30 day streak. It definitely improves my productivity and mood.
In the Medical Emergency Response Team (ERT) and Clinical Assistant Team, our training continued. We learned about intubation, placing a chest tube, and assisting surgery.
I found a lot of extra tea in the SPT secret stash. There are only so many types of tea in the galley and it turns out I am really into variety. I can drink the same flavor of coffee every day, but a new flavor of tea makes my day. It was getting darker and darker, and I finally checked out a headlamp, mostly in case of emergency. I saw a moondog, which was pretty cool.
We saw more and more auroras, especially after the moon set. The moon is up for 2 weeks at a time. When the moon rises it looks a bit like a sunrise
As it was getting darker and darker, I started to appreciate my walks out to the South Pole Telescope even more. During this period, while out at SPT working outside and taking photographs of the Auroras, I fell and hurt my knee on the stairs. It was the first time the reality of the harsh continent hit me. My first thought was “you have to get inside”, which I did quickly. A minor scrape could turn into a major issue were I to be stuck outside. I called the station doctor from the comfort of the building, and he came to give my knee a look and to walk me back. It was bruised for a few weeks, but I recovered well.
On the first of May the International Jazz Day video was released! It kicked off the day, and got more likes than many famous jazz musicians and over 15,000 views on Facebook and YouTube.
Check it out!: Our recording of Summertime is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uN6dUo3a18 and the recording kicked off International Jazz Day on Facebook
I modified my borrowed DSLR Camera (Thanks Bruce Terry!) to optimize it for aurora and astrophotography. This involved focusing for infinity in manual mode (on a star) and taping down the zoom and focus, so that it wouldn’t be bumped in the dark. It also involved modifying an external shutter release to have a new type of cold resistant wire, and attaching and taping it down. Finally, I found some SPT tripods I could make use of since I was more than willing to share with my colleague Amy–who is my co-winterover at SPT.
I had started sleeping early, at 10pm, and starting to get up at 7am. This was helped by putting my programmable lights in a night time blue at 9:45pm automatically, and in a sunrise configuration at 7am. As such, though I had a backup alarm, I didn’t need to use it. I got some “nature sounds” mp3s and videos from a colleague and setup several sound/video/lightscapes for my room. Here’s a “thunderstorm”:
On May 17 I gave the infamous “300 Club” a try as the weather was -100F or below for a few days. The idea is that you go in a sauna at 200F and then walk to the pole at -100F for a 300F difference. I succeeded in the mechanics, but couldn’t find the pole in the dark, so I might try it again if it gets that cold again (it hasn’t since). Somewhere in here I cut my hair really, really short and went back to my natural hair color. I helped launch a weather balloon:
Much of my free time in May I spent working on my Quantum Computer simulator which I released in late May. I spent the rest of May writing up in an academic paper. I also started taking Chinese lessons by phone with a teacher in Beijing. We try to speak for an hour twice a week. It’s really been helping to supplement my study by book and by app.
On the telescope front, I’ve been doing some analysis finding galaxy clusters in data I helped take earlier in the year. In May I was just finishing reproducing existing results, but now am proceeding to try to improve them.
Check it out!: My blog post on the 5-qubit quantum computer simulator I wrote https://codexgalactic.com/2016/05/21/5-qubit-quantum-computing-simulator/
June has been filled with a lot of events, and I’m really looking forward to sharing with you my reflections on my June experiences. As always, feel free to forward to family and friends who might be interested in subscribing. We are almost 600 people strong now!
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