(Left) - A picture of the "daily scroll", an overview of the current time, weather, and flight schedule at South Pole station.  LCD monitors with the scroll are in several places around station.  In this picture you can see that it's a balmy -30 deg F right now, which is about the high temperature for as long as I've been down here.  (Right) - Cooldown curves of the various different thermometers in the receiver cryostat.  The "UC Stage" is the stage that all the bolometers is on.  Since it needs to get the coldest, its the most thermally isolated from everything else, which means it both stays cold when its cold and stays warm when its warm (meaning it takes forever to cooldown).  Currently its at ~150 Kelvin, meaning we are about halfway to zero (which approximately hold cold they need to get).

Happy Thanksgiving!  Well, technically today is Thanksgiving at the Pole, because we're 19 hrs ahead of Chicago its really Thursday here.  However, we really celebrate Thanksgiving on Saturday, so that most people get a 2-day weekend, instead of working 6-days a week which is the standard schedule.  Tomorrow night, I'm going to help with pie making for Thanksgiving.  They make ~50 pies for Thanksgiving for the ~250 people on station, so they always ask for volunteer help on the big holidays (Thanksgiving and Xmas).  For those who remember, Thanksgiving dinner is sort of like Xmas here.  There are not enough seats in the galley/cafeteria for everyone, so there are three 1.5 hr meal settings (starting at ~4pm, ending at ~9pm).   And then after the last meal ... dance party!

The last few days have been slow at the telescope.  We've been waiting for the cryostats to pump down to low pressure and cool to ~0.25 degrees above absolute zero (0.25 Kelvin).  This process takes ~5.5 days, and for much of that there is not a whole lot to do at the telescope.  We've done a few things related to wiring up the readout electronics for the receiver, re-greasing some of the gears and bearings on the telescope, but overall not alot of telescope work to do. The detectors should get cold enough to work on Saturday night (just in time for official Pole Thanksgiving!).  We'll let the frirst few tasks run automatically, so hopefully we wont have to miss any of the Thanksgiving dinner.  But then starting on Sunday, we should start getting really busy for the next week or two, verifying that the receiver is working better after our changes.  If there is a big problem we'll have to re-open up the receiver again and fix it, which will delay us a couple weeks, if everything is working good, I'm likely to get out of here and home for Xmas.  So the next week will be really important!

Even though the telescope work has been slow, I've still been pretty busy because I need to put together an application for a facutly job at the U. of Chicago.  The main thing I need to do is to update my CV (which is really out of date), and write a "Research Statement", which is supposed to be a ~3-5 page document stating my research interests and what I would do if I became a faculty. The latter I've had to do some thinking about so its been taking a while.  I need to finish it by Tuesday next week, so I should really make sure to finish it in the next few days before the detectors and cryostat are cold. 

I also couldnt find my camera today (I'm sure I just misplaced it somewhere), so I dont have any real pictures, sorry!  My next post I'll make sure to find it so that I can at least have alot of Thanksgiving related pictures (pie-making, the dinner, etc.).

While down here, I've also been corresponding with some 3rd graders about the South Pole.  For fun, here are a list of their questions and my answers, enjoy!

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- Do you have your own igloo?

I wish!  At the South Pole, there is a research station large enough for 150 people.  Here I have a fairly normal looking bedroom with a bed and desk for me to sleep and work in.  There are also labs for me to build and test my experiments, a cafeteria with cooks (tonight we had spaghetti and chocolate ice cream), and even a basketball court.

- Could you send a picture of penguins? Narwhals?

I will send pictures of penguins.   There are none at the South Pole, but I've seen many on the coast of Antarctica.  I don't have any pictures of Narwhals. 

- How cold is it there? How do you dress for the weather?

Right now the outside temperature is about -30 degrees, and the wind-chill is -60 degrees.  When we go outside, we wear alot of extra clothing to protect us.  On top of my normal clothing, I usually wear snow pants, a parka, a scarf, winter gloves, a wool hat, ski-googles, and wool socks.  We try to make sure all our skin is covered when going outside.  If you don't, you can get frost-bite in only about 10 or 15 minutes. 

- How did you choose Anarctica? Is it fun being a scientist?

I work at the South Pole, which is in the center of Antarctica.  The South Pole is one of the driest and coldest places on Earth, which means there is very little water in the air.  This is important for my research, because we are trying to measure microwaves from very distant stars and galaxies.  Much like how your microwave works at home, microwaves are absorbed by water, which is why your food gets hot in a microwave oven.  So its very important that there is very little in the air here, so that microwaves from distant stars and galaxies aren't absorbed by air in the atmosphere. 

Its alot of fun being a scientist.  Not only do we get to go to exotic interesting places, like the South Pole, but we also are trying to build experiments that answer very difficult questions about how the world works.  It's hard to appreciate how big and vast the Universe is, but there are more stars in the Universe than grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth (thats alot of stars!)  As a scientist, I'm trying to build experiments that help us to understand where all these stars come from and how they work.  The more I learn, it helps me appreciate what an amazing and beautiful place the Universe is.

- Do you like to read? Do you have any pets at home?

I do like to read. In addition to scientific papers, I also love fiction and I try to read one book a month.  Currently I'm reading "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", its a book about a man in Japan looking for his lost cat (I promise that it's better than it sounds).

I have a cat at home, his name is Pookie.  He is 17 years old, which is quite old for a cat, but he's still very active and happy for a cat is age.  He likes to be pet and purrs easily. 

(and here are some pictures of my from three years ago when I saw penguins in McMurdo, Antarctica)

(Left) - Top of cabin, chain hoisting the optics and receiver cryostats down.  (Right) - Liz un-doing the lines to the pulse tube cooler to the optics cryostat (the thing that cools the secondary mirror for SPT to 10 K).  To remove the cryostats Liz and I have to climb to the top of the cabin, Liz is responsible for un-doing the optics cryostat side of things, I'm responsible for un-doing the receiver cryostat side of things.  She has a much harder time becuase she needs to sit on a ledge, while I have a platform to stand on.  

(Left) - Middle of cabin, chain hoisting the optics and receiver cryostats down.  A continuation of the above photo on the left.  (Right) - The optics (white) and receiver (red/right) cryostats finally separated.  Liz, John Ruhl, and Abby all in the picture.  

(Left) - Bottom of cabin, chain hoisting the optics and receiver cryostats down, cryostats nearly on the ground, a continuation of the top two pictures on the left.  (Right) -The BICEP2 team finally arrived at Pole, hoisting their crates filled with the BICEP2 cryostat up to the top floor of Dark Sector Lab (DSL), the building that SPT and BICEP2 share.  

(Left) - A rare picture of me with my camera, helping Liz put on the back plate of the receiver cryostat.  (Right) - Abby trying to attempt a pose that Bill has popularized the last two years at Pole on the back of the receiver cryostat.  The back-side of the focal plane and readout wiring is visible.

(Left) - Another rare picture of me with my camera.  I was checking some dimensions on the newly blackened focal plane.  (Right) - A top-side view of the focal plane.  Part of the re-work this year was to blacken the metal pieces that hold down the copper filter holders to reduce refelections out of the cryostat, hopefully this change doesn't cause other problems.

Its been a busy few days at Pole.  About two days ago we filled up an entire day taking down the receiver and optics cryostats out of the telescope cabin, so that we could begin the re-work that we came down here for.  Doing this is an intensive process, because you have to hoist down ~2000 pounds of cryostat out of the cabin, while two people (Liz and me) have to climb up into the cabin ~25 feet off the ground to detach the cryostats from their mounts, and de-cable the cryostats.

Since then, we've opened up the cryostats and begun the receiver re-work in earnest.  I think we have ~24 more hours before we start pumping on the cryostats again, and then ~24 hrs after that we can begin cooling them down.   I have to give the Pole science lecture on Sunday so I still need to prepare a little for that too. 

Anyway, I have to post quickly the satellite is almost down!  I'll write more when I get a chance, bye!

(Left) - SPT winter-overs Ross and Erik just about ready to board a plane to McMurdo (and then home) after having spent ~10 months at the South Pole.  They like to play up their craziness, hence the head slapping.  (Right) - Just before Erik and Ross were going out to board the planes we posed for this photo with the SPT'ers currently on station (minus Ken).  Left to right are Abby, Erik, Ross, Liz, and myself.

(Left) - The SPT team out by the runway waiting for Ross and Erik to board the plane out of the South Pole.  One of the nice traditions at Pole is either seeing people off or greeting them at the runway.  (Right) -Lounging around science waiting for Ross and Erik's plane to arrive.  Ross was feverishly trying to copy files off his computer at Pole.

(Left) - There goes Ross, Erik, and the two Ice-Cube winter-overs out to their plane, after having spent approximately a year at the South Pole over winter.  (Right) - Also of note this weekend, was the first significant party of the year, a dance party in the summer camp lounge.

Yesterday the SPT winter-overs, Ross and Erik, left the South Pole after each having spent ~10 months here, even over the winter.  It was sad to see them go, its been fun catching up with them after having not seen (only heard them on telecons) for so long.  Typically, winter-overs are known to get a little "toasty" after not having interacted with the normal population for nearly a year, but overall I think both Ross and Erik were doing really well.  That is not to say they weren't anxious to leave, but they were happy to see us, and we had fun doing activities with them the whole week, including using the sauna, playing foosball in IceCube lounge, and attending the first dance party of the season. 

Besides socializing, we've also had to finish up the last of the 2009 observing season's observations and download as much information from Ross and Erik regarding the telescope operations.  The last ~4 days have been great weather, which has allowed us to do Venus and Jupiter observations, which we use for making beam-maps for SPT.  A beam-map is basically a measure of the spatial response of our optics to a point source on the sky.  Planets are most useful because they are so bright that we can get a detailed beam-map in a very short amount of time, however they typicall only get to ~20 degrees elevation (similar to the Sun) because of our location at the South Pole.    We've also had to get several different tutorials from Ross and Erik on running the telescope.  This includes various things like: greasing the telescope's gears and bearings (notice how dirty Ross and Erik's coats are), running the auto-processing computers that pre-process and analyze the data from SPT, going over the paging system that alerts us if there is a problem with the telescope, ... and the list really goes on.  But it was very useful to have them around to refresh us on all these different tasks.

Last Saturday, was also officially the first dance party of the season, which of course took place in Summer camp lounge (the collection of tarp tents that ~100 people stay in during the summer construction season, because there is not enough room on station).  It was a fun dance party.  Similar to most dance parties, the dance floor has a larger percentage of women than the total station population, but there were definitely a few energetic men (of which I might be considered one).  The early season favorite for best dancer on station goes to Eli, the greenhouse tech, very impressive dancing Eli. 

Currently we are officially on our last day of observations for the 2009 observing season.  So approximately 24 hrs from now the camera should be off the telescope, and we'll be waiting for it to warm up.  So tomorrow and the next week should be pretty busy as we do that, and do a handful of improvements to the camera.  If all goes well, we should start cooling down the camera again before Thanksgiving, so that we can have that day off and enjoy the dinner down here.  Apologies if I dont have time to blog between now and then, because it could get busy, but I'll do my best.

(Left) - Walking back to the station (where we eat and sleep) from the telescope.  The station is about a kilo-meter walk from the telescope and is that structure furthest in the distance between the building.  The weather for observing has not been very good lately.  (Right) - Ross, Abby, and Liz climbed on top of the receiver cabin to sweep snow and check on the foam cabin window. 

(Left) - Abby climbing down from the top of the receiver cabin.  Its really slippery up there, so I dont like going up there, getting down involves feeling your way over the edge to this ladder that Abby just is getting onto.  (Right) - Abby getting a tutorial from Erik about how to move the telescope. 

(Left) - Ross, Liz, Abby, and Erik in the control room waiting for the receiver cabin to dock.  The telescope comes down from above, over the hole in the roof, allowing us to access the receiver.  (Right) - Ross, Liz, and Abby working on blackening some parts to put in the receiver.  We've made several parts to improve the baffling and reflections of stray light inside the receiver for next season.

I've been at the South Pole three nights now.  So far not much eventful has happened. 

At work, we've been mostly waiting for the weather to clear so that we can get final planet observations for the season.  The problem is that planets are pretty low on the horizon (~15 deg) and in the summer the weather is not as good, particularly recently where its been really cloudy outside (see the first picture on the webpage).  In the meantime we've been doing some observations that are less weather sensitive, getting trained by the winter-overs on some various maintenance and regular telescope tasks, and prepping some parts that we want to install in the receiver.  Overall, things haven't been really that busy though.  There are several stateside related projects that I'm still trying to work on while down here, so its good that I have a little time right now.  But I'm certainly not as efficient on them as I would be in Chicago.  

I've also slowly been trying to catch up with, and meet new, people on station.  I really dont feel like I have as much time down here as you might expect to do those sorts of things, but its nice to catch up with people after not seeing many of them for a year.  Regardless, many of my social activities have mostly revolved around catching up with the winter-overs.  Tonight we're going to the sauna for the first time this season, which also means my first shower since coming down here.  I've been here three days, so I'm due for my first two minute shower for the week. 

Anyway, right now I need to get back to work. Later.

  
(Left) Picture from the cockpit of the C-7 flight from Christchurch to McMurdo.  Notice the Antarctic mountains in the background (Right) Same flight to McMurdo, getting close to McMurdo and starting to fly over significant sea-ice


 









(Left) Hiking up a ridge to get a better view of McMurdo, Abby and Liz with McMurdo in the background (Right) Hiking up the ridge, looking back towards Abby.  Notice the sea-ice in the background and mountains in the background.  McMurdo is actually on an island, surrounded by the Ross Ice Shelf.


 










(Left) Same hike in McMurdo, Liz pausing to hug me near a cross memorializing a failed Antarctic expedition in 1903. (Right) Finally in the South Pole!  Ross (a SPT winterover), Liz, and I are walking back from the telescope.

So I'm finally at the South Pole!  Overall, the trip down here was exactly as planned and on schedule.  I arrived at ~noon New Zealand Time on Tuesday 10 November 2009, so ~5 pm Chicago time on Monday Nov 9th.

Yesterday, we caught a 6 am shuttle to go to the Antarctic center to check in and prep for our flight to McMurdo.  This involves formally checking in all your luggage, and gearing up in your extreme cold weather gear, which you must be wearing when you board the plane.  This flight does have a standard TSA-like check-in service, but run by New Zealand milatry personnel, who are all in their miltary khakis.  By ~1030am we took off, and ~5 hrs later we landed in McMurdo.

The time in McMurdo moved pretty fast.  By the time we made it to the main building it was ~4pm, we then had to sit thru an ~1.5 hr orientation.  They give you the basic talk of: welcome to the ice, these are the basic rules for McMurdo, info on weather, rooming, redeployment off the ice, drinking, computer info, medical, ... it goes on and on.  The part every year that I find funny is their lecture about altitude sickness.  The doctor always tries to push "Diamox" a pill to help with high altitude adjustment because the South Pole is ~10,000 feet high, and occasionally someone gets altitude sickness.  This is almost always because of over-exertion at work, because people go to work the next day and immediately start shoveling snow and doing regular manual labor.  But the doctor blames it on people not taking Diamox, and has a real fire and brimstone speech, where he says you have two options: 1) take the Diamox and you'll be fine, or 2) don't take it, and come back in a body bag.  Its 10,000 feet people!  Its not that bad.

Anyway, also in McMurdo, Abby, Liz, and I did a short ~1hr hike out to Scott hut, an original hut from an early successful South Pole expedition, and then up the ridge-line to get a better view of McMurdo and the ice sheet.  It was a nice hike, and the weather was pretty good for McMurdo, about 12 F with not much wind.

This morning, we took the ~3hr flight from McMurdo to the South Pole and arrived here around noon.  We spent most of the afternoon catching up with Ross and Erik, SPT's two winter-overs last year.  Ross is a new postdoc in Chicago, and Erik is a grad student from Berkeley, who built all the detectors in the camera for SPT, and was dedication and attention to detail in doing this was invaluable to the project.  I'll get better pictures of them tomorrow, but they both seem in pretty good spirits, although both are anxious to leave a week from now.  This afternoon, we mostly caught up with them, talked about the plans for the next few days, and then got a quick tour of the telescope.

Anyway, I got to end this before the satellite goes down.  I'm safe and sound at the South Pole, more to come later!

(Left): Waiting in the US Antarctic Center and listening to the Antarctic flight instructions.  Notice a few regulars from previous years in Pole (e.g. - Nate, Curtis, Liz, and Abby).  (Right): Me in the changing area, trying on some of my ECW gear. 













(Left): Liz climbing a tree in the Christchurch Botanical Gardens. (Right): Abby and Liz standing next to some flowers in the gardens.












(Left): Some parent and baby ducks in the water lily pond at the gardens. Feeding attempts by me were unsuccessful.  (Right): Me trying to entice some ducks with a leaf, pretending it was food, which totally worked.  

I'm in New Zealand!  The timeline for travel to Pole basically is as follows:

1. Thursday: Chicago to LAX, arrive 9pm in LA, take 1030 pm flight to Sydney, Australia (14 hrs long)
   
2. Saturday: land in Sydney at ~8am
3. Saturday: Fly to Christchurch, New Zealand (3 hrs long), arrive ~3pm
4. Sunday 1pm, get fitted for extreme cold weather (ECW) gear
5. Monday 10am, fly from Christchurch to McMurdo, Antarctica (~4.5 hrs long)
6. Tuesday 9am, fly from McMurdo to the South Pole (~3 hrs long)

So as of now, I'm basically finished with number 4.  Today we went to the U.S. Antarctic Center and got fitted for our ECW.   Before going to Pole, the Antarctic program give you all the weather gear that you possibly need: multiple hats and gloves, thermal underwear, a parka, carthart snow pants, ...  Now I basically have my stuff picked out exactly like I wanted for previous years, so this goes much faster now.  I also bring alot of more comfortable stuff from the US.

The fitting and orientation only takes ~2hrs so one has the rest of the day to explore Christchurch.  Today we went shopping for some last minute thermal and cold weather stuff during the morning, then in the afternoon we did some shopping for more Pole food related surprises (including gifts for winterovers) and walked the Christchurch Botanical Gardens, and then in the evening got a beer at the Dux de Lux (favorite Polie hangout) and then got some sushi nearby (you cant get Sushi at Pole).

The thing today I took the most pictures of was the Botanical gardens.   The gardens in Christchurch are really gorgeous, and today was a perfect day to walk around them (~70 deg and sunny).  Abby, Liz, and I spent only a little over an hour there, but it was so so nice to get out and walk thru some greenery, especially before going to Pole.  Liz had urges to climb several trees, one of which she really climbed high (see pic).  There were also a fair amount of flowers in bloom, although the rose garden was pretty dead this time of year.  As always, there were also alot of ducks milling about, including many baby ducks.  At one point, I tried to entice some babies nearer for cute photos, but was pretty un-successful.  Luckily, later I found some adult ducks that were more easily tricked into thinking a leaf that I was holding was actually food, and I was able to get within a couple feet.  

Tomorrow, I'm scheduled to fly to McMurdo at 10 am, so with any luck in ~15 hrs from now I should be in Antarctica!

(Above: Abby watches an outgoing C-130 cargo plane.  It is about a kilometer walk between the station and the telescope, and we have to cross the runway to get there (yes, where planes land).  If a plane is coming or going, we have to wait at the sign next to Abby until its clear.  This sometimes means ~15 minute waits in -30 degree weather)

Has it been one year already?!? Well not quite, but regardless it means that another trip to the South Pole awaits me. I'm scheduled to leave the U.S. on Thursday November 5, 2009, and then arrive at the South Pole on Tuesday November 10th. Five days sounds like a long time to get to the South Pole, but remember we lose a day traveling to New Zealand (its ~19 hrs ahead of us in Chicago), and then I need to spend two days in New Zealand to land, get de-jet-lagged and re-fitted for cold weather gear, before flying to McMurdo.  I'm scheduled to be there until January 14th, 2010, however there is a good chance I will leave early.  How early depends on how well things go, but it could possibly be before Xmas.   However, that would definitely be the best-case scenario, so cross your fingers friends and family! (If that happens, apologizes to my South Pole family!)

The same deal goes as last year, I love mail at the South Pole, if you send me a postcard or some mail/package I will send you a postcard. My address at the South Pole is:

Bradford Benson, A-379
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400
APO AP 96598

That is an Air Force postal address, and U.S. domestic postal rates apply (i.e. - a letter still only costs 42 cents, or whatever it is). Apparently mail is the lowest priority cargo to the South Pole, so it can take several weeks to arrive, you can't send perishables, and they recommend not to use packing material, since it will have to be disposed of, but if you must to use "clothing or something similarly useful and non-polluting". Anyone who sends me a postcard is promised one in return, just make sure to send me your address because I might not have it on hand.