Dark Sector

I drove a track van and  brought a DV (distinguished visitor) out for a tour of the dark sector. We saw MAPO, SPT, and Icecube. MAPO is the microwave telescope I already posted pictures of, SPT is the South Pole Telescope which is also microwave but they are looking at a certain dark section of the sky and mapping out what we can see that remains of the big bang. Icecube is a neutrino detector and cost more then the whole station to build.

 

 Inside the telescope!

 This is me with SPT.

Icecube is the building to the right. It has miles and miles of cables and detectors in one cubic kilometer around it almost to the bottom of the glacier.

This is a map of where all of the cables run. The small block in the middle is the Icecube building.

 This is the where the wires from the ice come out of the ground and into the computers that process the data that they are collecting. Icecube gets about a terabyte of data everyday.

 The view back to the three big telescopes and our van.

More sun dogs! I don't do any work in the dark sector but I will run some of the tours for DVs that show up over the summer. DVs could be anyone from NSF reps to congress members.