Even More Auroras

  More awesome auroras today. Since it cleared up the temperature has dropped back down to -87 F/-66 C with about 10 knots of wind. We are supposed to be getting another wind storm here in the next couple days so it should warm up and visibility should go down again.

Milky Way and the lidar laser again. The Moon comes back up again in a few days so we won't be able to see the Milky Way this well again for about two weeks. Also note the satellite streak in the top left.

I used my flashlight to back light myself, and it end up lighting up my breath too. Turned out way better than expected!

More Auroras

 It was nice and clear out today and not too windy (5 knots) so I took lots of pictures.

Midday Milky Way!

Milky Way and Lasers

The sky finally clear up after the storm. We even had a horizon last night! There are a lot more stars now than before the storm and we are starting to be able to see the milky way as well.

 We have now entered what they call "astronomical twilight" which is just the term for when the center of the sun is more than 18 degrees below the horizon.

 I've finally been able to take a few pictures that sort of give this perpetual twilight world a bit of justice.

The lasers are so cool!

 

 The red light is an LMC (the only thing that can run when it is this cold).

 The burry bit along the bottom is my parka hood. The cloud like spot slightly to the right of the center is one of the Magellanic clouds (dwarf galaxies that may be orbiting our Milky Way galaxy).

 

Auroras, Lasers, and Ice Tunnel Work

 More auroras from last week, because this week we got a 30 knot wind storm and we can't really see the sky anymore because of all the blowing snow.

It's difficult to explain what Auroras look like in person... they can move pretty quickly, like a sheet in the wind so sometimes you are too late to take a picture of a good set of auroras. Sometimes they are very faint and it looks like your eyes are playing a trick on you because it look like there might be a cloud but when you look at it more closely it is gone. Some of them are very bright a swirl around themselves and make fantastic ripples in the sky.

 The snow that the wind to blowing across the plateau has made the lidar lasers on top of ARO visible to the naked eye. Lidar lasers measure the heights of clouds as they pass overhead.

Today I did some work in the ice tunnels. We removed the wood debris from the torn down old warming shack in the tunnels and are making a large space to fit the new warming shack. Since ice is a fluid the tunnels tend to bulge in on all sides and get smaller as the ice moves to fill in the empty space of the tunnel. This means the tunnels has to be periodically widened and warming shacks will slowly get crushed (all of this happens over the span of years, I'm pretty sure the last warming shack was built about 12-15 year ago).

The process for opening the alcove in the tunnel for the warming shack has four steps. First you cut the ice into block shapes with a chain saw. This makes a fine dust like ice particles go everywhere.

Second you hit the blocks with a sledge hammer and they break off. Then you load the blocks into a banana sled.

Finally you drag the sled with the blocks down to a different tunnel that is no longer in use and stack the blocks to fill in the tunnel. The tunnels stay at a constant -55 to -60 F all year round, but it was nice to get out of the wind (-55 F actually feels quite nice compared to last weeks -90s F, I kept getting too warm). The ice blocks are pretty heavy and it was exhausting work but I had a lot of fun. It will take another few days to finish the job.







Bonus ice beards!

Auroras!

 We had some fantastic auroras today.

 These aren't even the good ones. I didn't have my camera on hand when the good ones rolled through.

 Auroras can be pretty fast so if you aren't ready right away you might miss the good ones.

 These are from my walk out to SuperDARN and ARO.

 Auroras are a fantastic, really amazing phenomena. It's difficult to think of a way to explain what they look like in person.

Bonus moon sliver picture!

Seasons First Auroras

 We covered up the windows for the winter yesterday. I spent the past week painting new ones for the galley.

 I did one for every continent. The seventh one is of the view of the sunset behind ARO and it is in the window where you would be able to see ARO from the galley.

 We had the first auroras of the season. I didn't have my nice camera with me at the time (I guess I'll have to start carrying it everywhere now). This picture was taken by my meteorologist friend

I took a picture with the small lab camera I carry everywhere and this is what came out, this is more what it looked like in real life. Since we still have a good amount of light on the horizon the auroras were pretty dim but that didn't stop me from sitting on the roof of ARO and watching them appear and disappear for about twenty minutes. 

 Today was the coldest it's been this year so far. The wind was very light which made it possible for it to get this cold, but it really doesn't feel that much colder because of the light wind. I would rather have a -100 non-windy day than a day at 15 knots at only -60 F.

100th Day of 2015

 We are now one hundred days into 2015! And I have spend the past 156 days on ice!
One of my friends found some old photo paper and dark room supplies on the berms and brought it inside. We made pin hole cameras and I have taken two exposures so far.

This is the first one. Took about 4.5 hours and some editing to get this. This is the view out of my window, not too bad for my first try!

This one is the moon and the telescopes, taken over about 3 hours. The wire across the middle unfortunately got in the way but you can still make out the flag line out to the dark sector. The exposure time is basically a guessing game because the light is so dim and the ISO of the paper is so low and its getting darker everyday. I also lost count of the new stars that have appeared!

 

Full Moon

 I am going to have to start using a tripod for pictures outside soon, it's getting pretty dark.

  

 The full moon was out today, so I took a picture with it on top of the ARO tower.

 The snow drifts are getting bigger, I used this one to stabilize the camera.

 Full moon over the plateau and the telescopes. (I'm pretty sure this is roughly the direction to Africa.) There is a star hidden in this picture to the left of the moon. I counted seven stars today. Three stars in the southern cross, Alpha/Beta Centauri, Sirius, and Canopus are now visible!

 The sastrugi are lit up by the small amount of light on the horizon opposite the moon. Look at all the snow the sides of the station accumulated!

(Photo credit to the station PA)

Fun fact: The moon looks "upside down" here because of the change in perspective from the northern hemisphere.

Earth Shadow and Moon

 This picture is from earlier in the week. The darker blue near the horizon is the shadow of the Earth.

 We had some big yukimarimo so I made a yukimarimo kabob with a piece of broken bamboo.

The full moon is back, but the bottom half of it is hidden in the clouds. There was an eclipse last night as well, but there were too many clouds to really see it clearly. We also changed times for daylight savings last night so that made what time to eclipse was actually going to happen a bit confusing.

Here is another picture of the moon, you can really see how much darker it has gotten this week just from comparing this picture on Saturday night to the first one from on Monday. Some of the darkness is due to the amount of clouds.