Star light, star bright, first star I've seen... this year! Plus more Yukimarimo!

I saw the first two stars of the year today (don't have any pictures yet). Canopus and Sirius are visible now and we will be getting more and more stars every day now. We will be able to see auroras starting in about two weeks!

 We had a few days of very light wind and we had hoar frost accumulate on everything. The ground, railings, flags, walls, pallets, glass, gas cylinders, literally everything. Mostly it accumulates on the windward side of objects but it covers everything it wants too. It kind of reminds me of moss.

 We also had more yukimarimo, they were bigger this time. Here is one with a clipboard for scale. I was helping out one of the meteorologists with measuring the snow stake field today. This basically means walking around to 50 different stakes and measuring the height of the stake (this is done every month). The monthly heights are compared to find the overall accumulation over time.

 They are such cute little puff balls!

Here is one I was able to pick up. The have the consistency of a very soft cotton ball, maybe a cotton ball that you pulled apart a little bit. You can poke it and it will hold the poke shape, but poke it too much and it will fall part in wisps and float away (imagine playdough made from clouds). I ate this one just for fun. It was very fluffy, kind of a weird consistency. Like denser cotton candy but lighter at the same time.

We are back down to about -84 F / -64 C and -123 F/ - 86 with wind chill (about 10 knots) but it looks like we should be getting another wind storm later this week and that will warm things up again.

The Last Dregs of Sunset

We missed the last part of the sunset because of 30 knot winds and almost white out conditions, I couldn't see ARO from the station and had to use the flag line to get there, it was pretty eerie. So I didn't get to see the green flash, but maybe we'll get lucky with the sunrise.

 I tried to take a picture that would put the size of the sastrugi into context. This is on my walk to SuperDARN. Basically sastrugi are perfect tripping hazard height.

 

 The Station, SuperDARN, and ARO all in one picture. That is my walk twice a week.

Here is where the sun would be if the sun was above the horizon! It was super nice out today, the wind storm brought clouds and the clouds bumped the temperature up to -50 F/-45 C. There was barely any wind today which made it feel beautifully balmy!

Offical Day of Sunset

We took a sunset group picture. I'm in the black and green jacket to the right of the person in the blue jacket. To get a clear picture everyone has to hold their breath. If everyone is breathing it turns out more like this:

 

 The flags were pulled up from around the ceremonial pole and brought inside for the winter. They will be replaced with new ones at the end of the winter.

 Today is officially the sunset, because the sun as reached zero degrees on the horizon. Weather permitting we should still be able to see it for a few days though.

 Sastrugi sunset tsunami!

 I had lots of fun takings tons of pictures today.

The clouds were awesome again today!

 Happy Sunset!

An Antarctic Holiday

Today is an Antarctic holiday. We had our sunset dinner celebration. We fancied up the galley for the occasion. It was probably the fanciest meal I've ever had. Full four course meal. Here is the menu.

 I designed the border of the menu. If you click on the menu it will enlarge.

 Salad. Everything in the salad came from the green house except for the cranberries, cheese, nuts and onions.

 Vegetarian option. The raviolis were delicious.

 Meat-a-tarain option.

 Pavlova!

 Chocolaty deliciousness! I am so full.

 The sun won't be actually gone for another few days and we might even see it in some places for about another week. It was pretty cloudy today though so we didn't see the sun at all. Hopefully it will clear up again before the sun is completely gone! Even when it is gone it will be just below the horizon so it won't be dark for another month or so. Happy Sunset!

Sunset '15 (Part 2)

 I don't have too much more to say about the sunset, except for that it is amazing. Hopefully the pictures can speak for me.

Today was a beautiful day and it wasn't too windy so it was really nice out (-56 F/-50 C with 10 knots). Sunset dinner is tomorrow!

Sunset '15 (Part 1)

There was a "sun puppy" (it's not actually called that but it was a little sun dog)! You can see it in the picture above on the right side, a sight rainbow in the clouds near the horizon, the rainbow spot had faded a bit by the time I got my camera.

 It was a pretty cloudy day, so not great for seeing the sunset but awesome for the clouds.

 The clouds are just awesome! We are supposed to get a big wind storm tomorrow with up to 30 knots winds, hopefully it blows over quickly and doesn't kick up a ground layer of ice crystals that obscures the horizon for the next week of sunset.

The sun did eventually come out!

This one has a polie (people who live at the pole are called polies) in it for scale! 

Because our sunset is so slow, the "green flash" can actually last hours. We can even see a "blue flash" because its so slow and the air is so clean. The green flash happens because of the refraction of the sun's light through the atmosphere. The green waves of light are a bit longer and can reach just a tiny bit further when they are bent around the horizon. The blue wave lengths are even longer than the green and usually get filtered out by particles in the air under normal circumstances. But since the south pole has the cleanest air in the world if you are standing at the right elevation at the right time it's possible to see the blue light waves from the sun for a few hours, of course weather permitting.

Fun fact: because of the way the image of the sun refracts through the atmosphere the sun is actually already below the horizon. When we see the sun sinking at the horizon it is already gone, what you are seeing is the image of the sun that has been bent by the atmosphere to reach your location. You can see this atmospheric distortion when the sun appears to be funny shaped near the horizon.
 

Yukimarimo and more Sun

Took more pictures of the sun today on my walk to ARO, I have to get my fill of the sun for the next six months!

It's going to be strange when the sun is gone for good, I've gotten so used to it being up all the time, but I suppose that means I'll get used to it being down as well.

 It's getting more noticeably darker and more colorful out.

Maybe it's because I haven't seen a sunset in four months, but the colors are amazing and the skyline is even more beautiful.

 The moon it still out, although it is getting smaller.

Yukimarimo are a little balls of snow that roll around like mini tumble weeds. They occur after a storm in temperatures between -59 to -72 degrees C when the electrostatic conditions are just right. Hoarfrost ice crystals get electrostatically attracted to each other and come to together to form small clumps that a light wind blows around and they collect more ice crystals. These little fluffy snow balls can supposedly get to be the size of small oranges. These ones were no bigger than a small grape, but it's still amazing to see this strange cold weather phenomena.

Sun and Sastrugi

 It's starting to look like a sunset!

The sun and the ceremonial pole marker. The ceremonial pole and the flags will be pulled and brought inside for the winter next week.

 Now that it is getting colder snow has started to stick on the walls. The sun doesn't heat the walls enough to keep the snow from accumulating anymore.

At about two in the morning the sun is on the windward side of the station.

This angle means the sun is lighting up the windward side of the sastrugi, last night I happened to be up and it happened to be clear and the lighting was so amazing I went outside just to take pictures.

 

Sastrugi remind me of miniature grand canyons, monument valleys, and other national parks' formations.

 

The Antarctic program has a newspaper called the Antarctic Sun. I was asked to be the south pole correspondent for the winter season so I write articles every month about life at the pole, here is the link to the first one.

The wind made a hole in an old snow wall.

Bonus video of more boiling water out the window!