Sunday Brunch at the South Pole

 Luck was on our side, and our flights made it through to McMurdo on Friday and then to Pole on Saturday morning.   McMurdo was a balmy 16 F when we stepped off the plane, with clear skies and a great view of Mount Erebus.  We had just enough time to find our rooms and get some dinner before checking our bags in again and heading to bed.  The next morning, it was back in the delta transport, and off to the airfield for the LC-130 flight to pole.

The transantarctic mountains were just as breathtaking as I remembered.  Tall rocky peaks with glaciers running in between, all covered in pristine snow.  Eventually the landscape went flat with just the small bumps created by the blowing snow.  Coming off the plane and taking that first breath of -40F air is still exciting for me at pole.  Walking down the stairs of the plane onto the snow, we were directed away from the still running propellers and around the nose of the plane and off the airstrip.  We were greeted by the two intrepid SPT winterovers, Nicholas and Robert.  After quick hellos, we headed into the station.  That first walk up the stairs into the door really reminds me that the south pole is on a high plateau (~9000 ft) as I find myself gasping a bit.  But overall, the altitude hasn’t been a problem beyond that.  

We had a whirlwind first day after that.  Nicholas and Robert are planning on leaving after a few days of overlap, so there is a lot to learn about the daily operation of the telescope and the different problems that might come up.   Last time, all my time was spent taking the polarization calibration observations and then reworking electronics, so I missed these aspects of operations.  We plan to keep up normal observations for a few weeks before switching into some maintenance.  So there are daily checks on the telescope and all of its systems, setting up the observations, and checking the data that comes out.   After lunch, we hopped onto a snowmobile and rode out to the telescope to get started.  Normally we walk, but the fast change in altitude can really hit you hard, so it’s better to take it easy for a couple days.  We had a full afternoon overview of the telescope and it’s systems before calling it a day, or so we thought.  

Later in the evening I got my first practice at responding to a very real outage in the station power.  As we were sitting in the SPT work area in the station, the power went out for several seconds.  SPT takes the power supplied from the station through a load leveler, which acts in as a big battery in this kind of situation.  Assuming everything is working normally, when the power comes back on, everything in the telescope should still be running as if the outage never happened.  But we still have to check, in case everything isn’t working normally.  With the load leveler, we have about 12 -15 minutes of power.  So that means getting to the telescope, and fast!  Before I could blink Nicholas and Robert were in their ECW gear, and I was on my way to do the same.   I didn’t make it to the telescope in the 12 minute window (which is a really fast walk of ~1km with all of the extra weight from the gear), but I did pretty good for not being acclimated.  After repeating the checks that Nicholas and Robert had already performed, we headed back to the station to relax for the rest of the evening.

  For our second day, we learned more about the computer systems, and then had the fabulous south pole sunday brunch.  Made to order omelets, pastries, breakfast meat, french toast, potatoes, fruit and cheese were all on the menu.  Sunday brunch is probably my favorite meal here.  Then it was back out to the telescope to check on things.   We ended up docking the telescope (where we move the boom so that it connects with the building and we can get into the cabin where the camera is), to do some work on the calibration system.  A few more instructions on taking care of the telescope (part of which included going up on the outside right next to the dish), and then back to the station for dinner.