Images of

ANTARCTICA

ARO and Skylab

Photos © 2004 Seth White

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At Pole, the areas surrounding the station are divided into sectors: the dark sector, RF sector, quiet sector, and the clean air sector (plus one or two more that I'm forgetting). This is a view looking from the station out toward the clean air sector. The building is the Atmospherical Research Observatory, or ARO. At Pole, the winds will mainly blow one direction, and this building is situated so as to be upwind of the station 90% of the time. This facility is operated by NOAA, and various atmospheric instruments are located inside. The fact that the building is upwind of the station means that the winds have remained free from all sources of pollution for thousands of miles. These winds are also almost completely free from contamination by plant life, and even the oceans. So by analyzing this air, accurate records of the earth's true background atmosphere can be obtained. Such measurements have been ongoing here at Pole since the IGY. There is also a suite of solar instruments here, including the system I'm working on. Interestingly, the skiway is situated such that the Hercules aircraft actually fly into the clean air sector when they take off. So data is only taken at appropriate times...else a large gulp of pollution will render the data useless. The same approach goes for the Kiwi systems at Arrival Heights near McMurdo - they will only do air sampling when the winds are from the North at greater than 10 knots.

A closer view of ARO. This building was opened in 1998, and replaced an older building which had served a similar purpose since 1977. This structure is the same type as the Dark Sector Laboratory (not yet occupied) and the Elevated Dorm (soon to be taken out to the Dark Sector for use by the ICE CUBE project). It's about a 5 minute walk from the dome and new station. On the way out, the wind is in your face, and on your way back it's behind you. The large tube sticking out of the roof is a collector for a particle counting instrument on the second floor. The rectangular box to the left is the 'penthouse', an addition to the building used to house an all-sky camera as well as the UV spectroradiometer (my project).

At South Pole, there are often little ice crystals floating in the air called 'diamond dust'. When conditions are right, some spectacular optical effects can be seen as the ice crystals play tricks with the sun's light. One fairly common sight is a sundog. Fairly often, the halo will extend all the way around the sun. I have seen photos of some unbelievable displays taken during perfect conditions. See the excellent atmospheric optics site here for some mind-blowing pictures taken at the Pole a couple years ago. This was the second-best one I saw during my stay. Not that great, but still the first time I had seen a full halo around the sun. There was a better one the first day I arrived, but feeling sick and lethargic I didn't go get my camera. Since there I saw a good halo my first day there, I figured they happen all the time. Wrong, that was the best one of all 12 days. The lesson, as always: keep your camera with you down here, and if you see something that makes you look twice, take a picture of it.

These are the instruments I'm working on here. Biospherical Instruments, located in San Diego, developed this system and have maintained a network of these things in both polar regions since the late 1980's. NSF sponsored the establishment of this network soon after the ozone hole was discovered. The main instrument is inside the white rectangular box to the left, with its optical collector sticking out. The three other instruments to the right are auxilliary sensors, aimed at supplementing the data obtained by the primary system. The little mousey-looking-thing to the right is a GPS sensor used to keep accurate time. The main instrument will take measurements of the solar radiation every 15 minutes while the sun is above a certain elevation threshold. It does a spectral measurement, where it measures the intensity of the incoming light as a function of wavelength. The wavelength range measured is from 280 nm to 605 nm, i.e. from UV up through the visible. For more info about this technology and the data obtained from these instruments, visit Biospherical's website.

This is the Biospherical Instruments area inside ARO. The system itself is very sensitive and precise, but it's well designed, well understood, reliable, and reasonably straightforward to work on.

Nearby is this system, used for analyzing the distributions of various particles in the ambient air. Air samples are obtained and subjected to an atmosphere where coatings grow on the minute particles, making them big enough to be seen and therefore counted. There are two types of counting systems employed at this station, each one capable of resolving different types (sizes) of particles.

Continuing along the second floor of ARO, here is the lounge area. I understand this space was occupied by visiting scientists during the summer season, and was only converted back to a lounge the week before I arrived. In many ways, winter on the ice is a lot better than the summer...

A weekly event at ARO is slushie night, on Fridays. Like the air, the snow upwind of the lab is some of the cleanest on earth. So one of the NOAA techs (Glen and Jason this year) will go out and scoop some up into a cooler. There is a good selection of liquor here, so you make your drink of choice with some snow in the glass. This is a slushie. The first week on station, I went even though I was still feeling a little green. It was a pretty relaxed time...and basically involved people sitting around bullshitting. Here's a picture as the evening was winding down.

Another major science building at Pole is Skylab. This is the large orange tower right beside the dome. It houses a slew of instruments, and has a good deal of character and charm. This is pretty much the South Pole equivalent of McMurdo's Cosray building.

Another view of Skylab. Similar to the Dome, it's days are numbered. In the next few years, it will be taken down and removed along with the dome. Discussions are beginning with the various PI's of the Skylab experiments as to where their equipment will be relocated. Some systems will go to ARO, some to the dark sector laboratory (DSL), and some to the new station itself. And naturally, they will all end up in clean, modern, efficient, sterile lab spaces. Skylab is pretty unique, and it was nice to see it before it becomes history.

The main entrance to Skylab is through a buried arch coming from the dome. As you approach Skylab from the arch, there is another arch running off to the right. This is an emergency exit, and is seldom used. But the breath of people walking through the skylab arch has created some nice frost on the sides of the arch.

This archway is like a little fairyland. It's still, silent, and on all sides you are surrounded by delicate ice crystals. Touch them and they tinkle as they break.

A close picture of the crystals themselves. These aren't as large or as nice as the ones I found in the ELF vault at Arrival Heights last year, but they cover every surface of this arch. In other areas at Pole, especially some of the instrument vaults, there are much larger crystals. I'm told some single crystals are about 2" long, but I haven't seen them. These vaults were sealed up for the season just after I got there, and I didn't know about them in time to squeeze in for a look. Next time....

More of the beautiful crystals. They tended to grow in ridges along the arch, probably due to the ribbing of the arch walls themselves.

The first floor of Skylab is this: the Cusp Laboratory. South Pole has two science techs, the Aurora Tech and the Cusp Tech. Dana is the Cusp Tech this year, and this is his second stint as a scitech at Pole. Seems like a good guy to me, and no doubt the instruments under his watch are in capable hands.

Along the upper part of the Cusp Lab wall is a nice wooden cutout of the San Fransisco skyline. When the Cusp Lab goes away in a few years, this great piece could well be lost. Dana is thinking about scavenging it this winter and putting it somewhere where it can continue to be displayed.

A great Dilbert cartoon on a cabinet in the Cusp Lab. "I am NOT going to the South Pole!" Ha.

On the second floor of Skylab is the Cosray lab. Bartol Research Institute at U. of Delaware operates neutron monitors here, similar to the Cosray lab at McMurdo. A difference is that there are two sets of detectors here: shielded ones sitting outside, with lead/polyethylene layers around the detectors, and unshielded ones sitting on the fourth floor of this building. This is a picture of the shielded detectors, on a platform outside Skylab. The Bartol guys are also involved in the SPASE (South Pole Air Shower Experiment) project, located in the dark sector, as well as the ICE CUBE neutrino detector project. Len Shulman and Paul Evenson from Bartol were both on station while I was here.

On the third floor of Skylab is a lounge area, and it's one of the best spots on station. There's a nice view, lots of stuff scattered all over the place to keep you interested, and hardly anyone comes up here. There is door leading to a little balcony outside, and a sign on this door asks you not to pee off the balcony. Hmmm. I walked up one day and found a girl sitting on the couch. I went to the balcony for a minute to snap a picture and when I came back she said "You didn't just pee off my balcony, did you?". Several different sarcastic things flashed through my mind to say in response to this comment, but instead I just said something curt but polite. This happens a lot with me, but 99 times out of a hundred I just don't say what I'm thinking...and in hindsight it almost always turns out to be the right move. And thankfully, I didn't have to work with her hardly at all. That being said, however, my impression of most Polies was quite good. I think that the population at South Pole is a good group, and definitely a cut above the general McMurdo crowd (even though there are a lot of exceptional people at McMurdo).

Outside the lounge door, there's a ladder to take you up to the fourth floor. Here, the Aurora Lab can be found.

Another group that I worked for last year at McMurdo was also on station at Pole at the same time. The team is led by Gonzalo Hernandez from U. of Washington, and were a great group to work with last year. Their South Pole Fabry-Perot Spectrometer is in the Aurora Lab, so I dropped by one day to take a few pictures and say hello. Gonzalo, Ruth, Stephen, Bryan, and Michael were down on the ice this year, and it was nice to know a few more people at the South Pole. The Aurora Lab is crammed with stuff. There are instruments, electronics, and computers in every nook and cranny here. Five people in this lab is almost too many. Here is the rack of equipment for the FPS.

If I recall correctly, this is a monochromator. A monochromator is a device which can separate light into very narrow wavelength bands for spectral analysis applications.

The bare neutron detectors are also located here, tucked away in a little box hanging from the ceiling. There is very little wasted space in the Aurora Lab...

In a little back room are more optical instruments, including these: auroral photometers (similar to the ones I had at Arrival Heights last year) and an all-sky camera. Or at least I think this is an all-sky camera. I encountered so many instruments while at Pole that I can't keep them all straight. I probably should have written more things down, but photos of technical equipment aren't really that thrilling...and comprehensive descriptions of said items are probably even less so.

Here's the roof of Skylab. In the foreground is a herd of GPS antennae and in the background there is a dome which belongs to Gonzalo's FPS system. There are no handrails on this roof because such things would obscure the fields of view of the instruments, and it's a long way down to the snow below. And it ain't the soft fluffy fall-cushioning kind of snow either.

Another gratuitous shot of yours truly at Pole - this time on the Skylab roof. This is a great view of the dome - see the Pole Panoramas page on this site for a dome pic that turned out really well from this spot.