Goodnight SPTpol

Our group finally made it to the South Pole late Tuesday night.  And through some good luck, the group of SPTers following us made it through on Thursday.  The plane flight was stunning as always.  I didn't get a lot of great pictures this time, because the windows on the LC130 (Hercules or Herc for short) were pretty scratched.  But here is one I do like of the Transantarctic mountains as we flew over.  The plane flies at an altitude of about 20,000 feet, and some of the mountains look enormous, so they have very high peak elevations.  I like this picture because I see the illusion of movement in the glacier below.

One view from the plane flight to the South Pole.

Now that we are here, it's time to get to work.  Our first job has been to decommission the old SPTpol receiver.  SPTpol was a great instrument that has collected five years of data now and we have some really fantastic measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background with it.  We had our winterovers turn off the mechanical coolers that maintain the ultra-cold interior of the cryostat and then proceeded to start removing all the cables and electronics.  SPTpol has now been taken out of the receiver cabin, and is sitting inside the telescope building for us to box up for shipment back to the US.  We'll keep some of the electronics here at pole as spares, but for the most part, everything goes.  Our crates containing SPT-3G have started to arrive at pole, so soon we'll start bringing in all the new stuff.

The SPTpol receiver.  The big white cryostat on the left contains the SPTpol mirror, and the black one on the right contains all the SPTpol detectors.

The empty receiver cabin where SPTpol used to live (and where SPT-3G will get installed).  You can see the light coming in at the very top of the cabin, where the cryostats look when they are installed to see the primary mirror of the telescope.  This entire room moves around with the telescope as it scans the sky.

The SPTpol optics cryostat leaving the building.  It's a big piece of equipment that we don't have space for with all the new stuff coming in.  It's so big it can't go out the normal doors, so a snow ramp was built up to some removable panels in the side of the building.  The cryostat was taken to another location away from the telescope where the South Pole carpenters can build a crate around it for transport back to Chicago. 

New SPT-3G cargo entering the building through the same panels. 

 

 

 

The SPTpol packing/SPT-3G unpacking crew.  We're standing in front of the new SPT-3G cryostat.  You can't see it very well here, but there will be many more pictures to come as we continue assembly.