I'm heading to the South Pole again this year, for my 5th time!  Its hard to believe that I've spent about 8 months down there over the years.  Having last year off, I'm sort of anxious to go again.   This is also a big year, because we are retiring the SPT-SZ receiver / camera (the thing I started working on in Berkeley in 2004) and installing the new SPTpol receiver / camera.  SPTpol should be 3x more sensitive than SPT-SZ, and also measures the polarization of light; a capability that should allow us to probe the physics responsible for the Big Bang, and also measure the mass of the neutrino.  Pretty exciting stuff.  Above is a picture that one of our winter-overs, Daniel Luong-Van, took of the South Pole Telescope (SPT). 

I will tell you more slowly throughout the blog, however this is just to let you know that I will be leaving the U.S. to fly to Christchurch on December 1st, and should be at the South Pole on Dec. 6th.  As some of you might remember, you can actually send mail to me at the South Pole for standard U.S. mail rates (it uses an Air Force PO address).  If you send me something I promise to send you a postcard.  Though, as you might imagine, it takes a while to get mail down there, so make sure not to wait too long!  Address is below:

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

Also, to get you excited for some of the action shots that await you, here are some pictures of us assembling SPTpol in Chicago for some tests.   Below are Abby and me tilting the SPTpol cryostat so that we can get a better look at the inside.  All the gold stuff gets cooled to less than 4 degrees above absolute zero, and the green that you see is a electronics circuit board where the detectors live.  They need to get to 0.25 degrees above absolute zero, so that they are sensitive enough to see the relic light from the Big Bang that we are observing.  

Below is a little better look on the inside of the cryostat.  If it looks familiar to you, it should be, because we designed the SPTpol cryostat to look almost identical to SPT-SZ, it is mounting to the same telescope after all.  The thing that is really different are the detectors, though those are for a discussion another day. 

Below is a picture of Kyle, Tyler, and I helping to close up the cryostat for some tests.  There have been many late nights of testing in Chicago in preparation for deploying SPTpol, but the hard work in Chicago is almost done.