The Last Aurora of Winter (Probably)

 It's getting so bright outside!

I don't need a head lamp anymore so see where I'm walking now. It's incredibly bright out. The sky has that 5:30 AM calm, quiet, morning feeling that is reminiscent of getting up super early for international flights. (At least that is what it feels like to me).

Moon Set

 I borrowed a friends 300mm lens and took some pictures of the moon setting. The lens was a tiny bit out of focus which was too bad. The next moon will be much less spectacular because it will be a lot brighter out.

 It was pretty awesome moon set, it doesn't usually set almost full like this.

This is the road out to the dark sector.

Camera Set Up

This is my camera set up for braving the coldest, longest winter on earth. Things that are important to notice:

1. Electronic hand warmer taped to the battery side of the camera. This gives me about 40 minutes to work with before the battery freezes, I usually get cold before that happens though.

2. Taped focus ring. This keeps the focus on infinity (good for stars/moon/far away stuff), it's annoying to have to deal with the focus ring with mittens on, in the dark and when you can't see through the view finder.

3. Teflon cord remote with epoxied nut  for easy activation with mittens on. I have to cut the normal cord for this remote and solder in a Teflon cord so that the cord would remain flexible in extreme clod. Normal camera remote cords would freeze solid and snap when bent after about -30 F. The remote is plugged into the side of the camera and I have also taped that port closed so no snow can infiltrate the area.

4. Non rubber strap. Rubber ones freeze solid and crack.

5. Hat attached to strap as a camera pouch for easy stowing and added warmth.

6. Piece of wood. I use this to adjust the angle of the lens from wherever I have place my camera (snow, railing, roof, cardboard box, etc.) It's a light and compact alternative to using a tripod. I don't like to carry a tripod everywhere I go, it's bulky and to heavy to carry around all the time while I'm working outside. Plus holding on to anything with your hands for extended periods of time compresses your gloves and makes your hands very cold pretty quickly. I avoid carrying things with my hands while outside as much as possible. Plus tripods have to be winterized because any grease in the tripod joints will freeze up and not allow for any movement so this grease has to be cleaned out and replaced with extreme cold temp grease.

7. The rubber thingy around the view finder is also removed. This rubber thingy would freeze and crack if used outside.

8. Most importantly learning where all the buttons are by feel and being able to change settings with in the dark with little to no visuals was very important. LCD screens stop working after a few minutes so pretty much everything is done blind. Many times what you are taking a picture of was too dark to see with the naked eye let alone through the view finder so framing shots was just a lot of guess work and laying around on the ice trying to line things up.

That's pretty much it. A big thanks to Robert Schwartz to teaching me about winterizing a camera, supplying a plethora of awesome advice on aurora photography and recommending to the buy the camera that I have. Here is his website and amazing time-lapse videos.
 

Orange on the Horizon

 Since it was warm enough to run equipment yesterday for the first time in weeks the station was a frenzy of clear drifts and shuttling trash out to the trash berm all day.

It was also clear enough out to see a stripe of orange on the horizon. The sun is rising a lot faster now. The suns speed in relation to the horizon is sinusoidal, so the closer it gets to the horizon the faster it rises. The sun moves about half a diameter vertically during the equinox (sunrise/sunset) at it's fastest.

 All the heavy equipment activity lit up the power plant exhaust.

 Yay new colors!!!

 It is easier to see the vastness of this place now that there is more light. In the dark there wasn't really a horizon and when you were just walking around in your own little head lamp bubble it was easy to forget the huge expanse of flat nothing we are surrounded by (plus I was too busy looking at the stars).

 

 The full moon was hiding in some clouds making a pretty eerie scene all day.

Sometimes the station looks like some kind of science fiction space station on another planet.

 

Bubbles at -100F

So awhile back I wanted to know what soap bubbles did at -100F. It's a very silly video but this is what happens:
 

Blowing Soap Bubbles in -100 F from Marissa Goerke on Vimeo.
 

Murky Weather

 I found a sastrugi arch yesterday, but it was difficult to take a picture of it in the lighting we had.

The past few days have had a very ambient murky light. That lighter spot in the sky in the picture above is actually the moon. It is supposed to be full today but who knows if we will actually get to see it again.

 Everything looks the same shade of dark blue and I had to use my head lamp so I wouldn't be constantly tripping over sastrugi.

Yesterday was a perfect day for taking creepy pictures at SuperDARN though. It is also really warm today, -57 F and you can absolutely tell the difference.

The air felt different, warmer, more syrupy and it had a different smell, wetter somehow. The wind has been coming out of grid east for a while now and we haven't warmed up above -70 in weeks (that I can remember). Now the wind is coming from grid north from the Weddell sea. I checked the weather when I got back inside and saw that the physio-altitude was at 10,874 ft. (We had been stuck around 11,500 for a week or more now).

Nobody has noticed that I have been breaking off sastrugi carrying them back to the station and standing them up here for about a month now... They have started to grow frost on them, making them kind of fuzzy, which is interesting. I wonder if my 'sastrugi monolith garden' will make it until station opening. This is some seriously slow paced winter entertainment right here, hopefully I can get away with calling it 'art' and it not be taken as evidence that I'm going nuts. (I'm not going crazy, don't worry, but while we're on the topic, I have had at least three dreams in the past week and half about going to the grocery store and cooking food.)

The station is covered in frost too and that also looks pretty awesome. 

We took the window covers off today!!

Removing the Station Window Covers from Marissa Goerke on Vimeo.

The super sensitive aurora camera on the roof was shut off today at noon so we were able to take the window covers off the station for the rest of the winter! It's so strange not to be looking at window covers anymore and randomly getting surprised by your reflection instead!

Moon Dogs and Musings

 Yesterday after an annoying bout of the ‘screaming-barfies’* I made a cup of tea at ARO to warm up my hands. By the time I made my tea my hands were warm again so I took my mug of tea to the roof to see the moon dog. It was a very short tea time on the roof because it only took a few minutes for the near boiling tea in a ceramic mug to chill to a temperature where getting my lips stuck to the mug was a definite possibility.

August is sometimes called “Angry August” because at this point we have been stuck in the station with each other for over six months and with sun coming back the end of winter is now in sight. August is also the time in the winter when we get our flight credit and can start planning our off ice traveling. This makes for people getting restless, feeling cooped up, and impatient with how much time we still have left. Two months sounds a lot shorter especially with the sun glow on the horizon. I’m a little sad to see the stars go and the sun come back. I have had a fantastic time this winter and I don’t really want it to end, I love it here. Although I could really use a nice crispy juicy apple and some cheese-its. Also some garlic stuffed olives. And fresh mozzarella cheese. The only other thing that bothers me is not having moved beyond a one mile radius from the station in an entire year (besides that little jaunt to McMurdo in January). I guess I will just have to make up for it next year! 

 

In this picture you can see Saturn, Scorpio, Sagittarius and the Moon. The Milky Way runs across the top right corner but with the combined effect of twilight, clouds and moon we can't see it anymore. We might get one more chance to see it when the moon sets next week, we shall see.

*“Screaming-barfies” – An ice climbing term adopted by Polies to describe the feeling when your hands get so cold they are in some sort of state between numb and a burning hurt so bad that you want to scream. There is no lasting damage, this is not frost-nip, it’s just really freaking cold, your fingers get fumbley and hurt and they hurt even more as you warm them up, kind of like a worse version of the pins and needles you get when your foot falls asleep. I guess it’s your body punishing you for letting your hands get too cold while trying to use them.

 

Side note: I highly recommend reading "The Martian" by Andy Weir, it's a fun, quick read. I read it in one sitting. Try to imagine yourself 'stranded' here at the South Pole, the most Mars like place on earth while reading it, it definitely added to the experience.

The Usual Updates

The melons are doing great, but the rate of growth has slowed down. I’m taking that to mean that they are almost ripe or that they were very effected by the drop in CO2 in the growth chamber. We have run out of CO2 gas cylinders in the elevated station, there are more on the berms but we won’t realistically be able to find them until it is light out so the plants must survive on the normal levels on CO2 in the station that we polies provide.

 In other news we came in second place in the darts tournament, lost to the underdogs at DDU who joined the tournament two weeks after the official start.  They are a happy bunch of French winter overs on the coast and have had daylight back again for a while now.

We entered nautical twilight this past Saturday the sun is now about 12 degrees below the horizon. Nautical twilight is named because it starts just after it is dark enough to see the main 63 stars that sailors used to navigate by back in the day. The sky was cloudy but had an undeniably bluer hue almost opposite the moon yesterday. With the moon, twilight and the clouds there were hardly any visible stars any more (which is actually pretty sad). Because the full moon and twilights are getting so bright the sensitive aurora cameras on the roof of the station will be shut off on Wednesday (tomorrow). Once these cameras are shut off we will be able to take the window covers off because there is no more risk of camera damaging light pollution. This is a huge ‘end of winter’ mile stone and it will be great to be able to see out of the galley windows again (although it is going to be a lot colder in the galley with the windows exposed).  Temperatures are still cold, -80 F to -90 F this past week, plus 8 to 15 knots of wind (it’s been a pretty cold week).

The First Cantaloupe!

 While working in the greenhouse I noticed that a cantaloupe had fallen off the vine overnight!! We all passed it around and smelled it all day. It smelled so sweet and wonderful!!

At lunch I opened it up and cut it into little pieces so we could all have a piece of the first melon!

 It was fantastic! Everyone was ecstatic about having a taste of melon again after nearly six months with no fresh fruit! Hopefully the watermelons will ripen soon, we are planning to have a big "Melon Party" celebration for that day.

In case anyone forgot because I haven't mentioned it in a while, I do do work here! :D

Twilight is Here!

We had a pretty nice display of auroras yesterday just after lunch. They were moving extremely fast and it was very impressive. I played with turning my ISO waaaay up so I could take some faster (and grainier) exposures to attempt to capture some of the crazy movement that was happening.

 Look at all that snow coating the wall of B-4 Pod (that's the gym)!

 The sun is now at 13 degrees below the horizon and is making a very obvious glow on the horizon even to the naked eye.

 This is the B-1 emergency escape.

 ON a clear day like today you barely need a head lamp anymore!

 The moon is rising almost new which puts it right near the glow on the horizon.

 This is one of my friends who runs one of the telescopes here looking for evidence of the big bang.

 The auroras are significantly more purple now. It's crazy to think that the sun can already interact with phenomena right above my head but it will still be another month until we will see the sun down here.

 More high ISO grainy pictures to capture the form of the auroras, and the necessary winter handstand picture.

Auroras over SuperDARN and the horizon glow. Auroras don't generally happen on this side of the sky so this was pretty cool to see.

Who said there aren't polar bears at the South Pole?

I made a polar bear costume, it's huge on me because I made it big enough to fit over the average polies ECW gear. So the costume can be worn outside.

A Few Time Laspes

Aurora and the Moon over the SuperDARN antennas from Marissa Goerke on Vimeo.

Auroras over the station from ARO from Marissa Goerke on Vimeo.

Aurora over the station from ARO on July 8th from Marissa Goerke on Vimeo.

Finally got around to uploading some of these!

Commute

Here is the time lapse I made of my afternoon ''commute''. It's about 1.3 miles long and passes through every time zone. Notice that it is clear enough to see the third star in Orion's belt right on the horizon, it is rarely clear enough to see that third star.
 

Around the World Commute from Marissa Goerke on Vimeo.

Here is the star trail compilation of the same time lapse:

 

Melons, Darts, and Star Trails

We now have six watermelons and three cantaloupes! I included a pen in the pictures above for scale. I've been told by multiple people that they have heard from the higher ups that this is the first winter with melons!

We lost our darts game against Dumont d'Urville but we still have a chance to win the tournament if we win our last game against Concordia on Wednesday. This is the T-shirt design I made for the tournament.

It has been fairly windy the past few days which is too bad. The blowing snow covers up the stars and the slight glow of the sun on the horizon and makes it very dark. The camera can still pick up some stars through the clouds though and this star trails compilation turned out pretty well despite the low visibility weather.