South Pole Telescope Boot Camp

This past week has been boot camp on the operations and summer maintenance of the South Pole telescope.  We've done everything from docking the telescope for work inside the receiver cabin, to greasing the bearings, responding to fake power outages, taking care of the computers and data transfers, gathering water from the rodwell, and of course continuing observations.   It's been a bit of a blur, but we're ready to take over from the winterover (who leaves tomorrow).   Over the course of the past week, I've steadily acclimatised to the altitude, as the walk to the telescope has become enjoyable.  

This is me ready to head outside to grease the elevation gears.  Note the lovely jacket and gloves that are reserved solely for this purpose.  This type of jacket washes a little better that the Big Red.  The grease tends to get everywhere because you have to get right up next to the gear to do the job properly.   Another job we'll be tackling this summer is to clean up all the globs of grease that fall off the gear all year long onto the telescope base.


Beyond taking care of the telescope, we also managed to fit in some fun time this week.   Today we were lucky enough to go on an inspection of the ice tunnels that run from the station out to the rodwell.  These tunnels have the pipes that provide our fresh water and take away the waste.  Beyond their primary function, they are also used by wintering polies to create shrines that stay well preserved because the temperature is around -55 degrees F.   The first thing you notice when you go in is that air is a bit on the sewery side.   The tunnels are tall enough to stand in comfortably, and since there is no wind, they didn't feel too much colder than outside.  Because the ice below is constantly shifting and snow above is moving around, the tunnels are constantly changing their shape and require new walls to be cut (using chainsaws).

At several points through out the tunnels there are ladders that go up to the surface.  These emergency exit hatches allow people to get out in case of cave-in.   The closer we got to the rodwell (the source of our fresh water), the cleaner the air got, and the increased humidity created  fantastic ice crystals on every surface.  At about this point, the retractable lens cap on my camera froze open, and frost formed over the lens, so the rest of my pictures turned blurry.

Random items we saw in the ice tunnels included a couple of well-preserved fish, a pig head from a pig roast,  a tub of ice cream, and the ice sculpture of Amundsen from the 100 year celebration in 2011. 

Speaking of things from past years, we did a minor excavation ourselves at the telescope.  The SPT  winterovers often kept some food out at the telescope.  It is saved in a  box outside of the building, where the food stays frozen and hopefully edible.  Inside the box were items from the winter of 2012, including a this banana and some leftover chicken (apparently of possible unsafe age).  But there was also a perfect kiwi, some grapes, and guacamole.