Food Shopping

 On Sunday, one of the other science techs and I really wanted to make brownies. Unfortunately we were out of bakers chocolate and the freezer trench had blown in. It does this every few days. To get to our food stores we have to shovel about 3 feet of snow the entire width of the door.

 Success! Now to hunt around in the dark for what food items we want...

Woohooo chocolate! 

Clear Day (Finally)

 After weeks and weeks of overcast and wind and storms we finally had another clear calm day!!

This panorama turned out a little wonky but it's the best I could do, my phone doesn't really enjoy doing anything at -70 F.

 I saw the first glimmer of the sun below the horizon after 75 sunless days! It was so bright it hurt to look at. It's still two days until the official day of sunrise. We will get a two day weekend this weekend to celebrate it!

I love the blue of unobstructed polar twilight.

It was a very clear night as well so I finally got to put my camera to good use, it had been collecting dust in the past few stormy weeks.

I wish it could be clear like this every night! 

 It was fantastic out! The little red dot near the horizon, almost in the center is Venus. The bright dot above and to the left is Mars.

Such a cool place to live. 

January ICESat

 I have not posted in a while because it has been very cloudy, windy and stormy. Nothing interesting to take pictures of!!

 Today was finally a nice day and we went out on ICESat.

 It was pretty clear out but very overcast which made it a little eerie to be 7 miles out, not much to keep your bearings with.

 Nothing at all really, except for the flag line we follow.

I wear two parkas on ICESat runs!

Bright moon on a clear night

 The moon is so bright the balloon was visible for a long time.

Looking back at camp from out at TAWO.

 Moon shadow!

A plane passed directly over head! I could hear it! It was so loud. It was strange to think of a few hundred people passing over our little camp, probably eating dinner on some long international flight completely oblivious to the tiny pin pricks of light that mark our little existence on this massive expanse of dark ice. Can't believe that it's already just five weeks until a plane will land here.  

Plastic Balloon

In the spring time, when the ozone hole develops in the northern hemisphere we launch plastic balloons when NOAA requests them. These balloons are cylindrical and which reach higher altitudes (25-40 km) and perform better in colder temperatures than the rubber balloons we normally launch. 

It takes everyone on station to launch one of these balloons. I'm at the bottom of the balloon, carrying the sonde box at the top of the hill.

It was so clear and bright out we were able to see it floating up for about a half hour!

Balloon in the Moon!

 Very cold clear Sunday, about -60 F (-51 C).

 Balloon inflation station.

 The sky is pretty cool!

New year, New Mascots

The flamingo was buried in a snow drift during the last wind storm and then it was run over by the loader removing snow and it lost it's head. Very sad. So the green house needed a new front door lawn ornament. I carved this silly baby polar bear who's ears are too big and in the wrong place out of a big chunk of snow and put it up on the roof.

Then I went through our scrap hardware and fixed up the flamingo with a replacement head. Maybe I'll add some eyes before I seal his neck holes with epoxy and put him outside. 

Caught the moon over the tower yesterday.

And another flower bloomed!! Happy New Year from Greenland!

Polar Stratospheric Clouds

 Polar stratospheric clouds or PSCs also called nacreous clouds are iridescent clouds that appear in the polar stratosphere in the winter at altitudes of 15,000–25,000 meters (49,000–82,000 ft).  They have a connection with breaking up the ozone layer, but they are pretty spectacular.

As you can see by these pictures, last week in the high winds the 50 meter tower fell down. Very sad, I still can't really believe that it fell.