Antarctica 2018: Chapter 11: Work at the South Pole

Link to Chapter 10: Thank you, friends.
Link to Chapter 9: At the bottom of the world
Link to Chapter 8: Onward, Southward!
Link to Chapter 7: Exploring McMurdo Station
Link to Chapter 6: Touchdown Antarctica
Link to Chapter 5: Flight Day!
Link to Chapter 4: ECWs
Link to Chapter 3: Christchurch!
Link to Chapter 2: Auckland
Link to Chapter 1: From Hawaii to Antarctica

Aloha everyone! Thanks to those of you who have been following along with my Antarctic adventures thus far. It’s been a really fun, stimulating and challenging time down at South Pole thus far, and I’ve really enjoyed it.

I haven’t posted much about the work I’ve done so far, and that’s because I’ve been busy doing it! So here’s a look back at some of the work I’ve been doing as the resident PI of LANDIT. If you’re curious what LANDIT is all about… stay tuned! My next blog post will be about the science behind this project.

A little Pole humor. Picture taken in the B2 science lab at Amundsen-Scott Research Station. One of the Research Associates was trapped at McMurdo Station for a while, awaiting good weather to fly to Pole, and made this sign. I had a very similar sentiment about this time last year, when we were looking for funding to make LANDIT a reality…

And today… here I am! Walking to work at the SuperDARN building (my staging location at Pole) on a stormy summer “night”!

After arriving and getting settled in, it was time to scope out my work location! I got set up, and moved my stuff over, to the SuperDARN building, pictured below. South Pole Station is about half a mile grid north (to the right, out of frame).

Side view of the SuperDARN building. This facility hosts the data collection units for all the Phased Array Radar antennas visible in the background. There are two experiment rooms inside, of which one became mine for the 2018 Summer season. The building is on stilts to allow wind to blow under and around it [Pole collects about 8-12” of snow per year from cross-continent drift].

I quickly made sure to put our mark on the building =)

The door to SuperDARN, on the inside. The LANDIT lab area is behind the camera. Welcome to the Air Force Research Laboratory, Temporary Operating Location South Pole!

Bringing 250 pounds of equipment half a mile might not sound all that challenging, but at the time, it sure felt like my Sisyphus burden revisited. South Pole is at 9300 feet altitude, and due to squashing of the atmosphere at the Pole, frequently feels like a barometric pressure of between 10,500 and 11,200 feet. Combined with the cold, carrying any amount of equipment half a mile can feel exhausting.

I had the pleasure of dragging a man-sled from South Pole Station to SuperDARN, loaded with all my equipment (only a third of the equipment pictured below). While it certainly felt like I was pulling a car behind me, it was kind of cool to think that this was how Robert Scott brought his gear across Antarctica in 1912. And his team pulled their sleds a thousand miles, not just a half-mile! I can certainly empathize with the struggle. Then again, Scott died on the return.

Top: Historical photo of Scott’s team on their way to the South Pole, with man-sleds. Left: Modern version in use at the Pole today!

So every day, I drag two sleds’ worth of equipment about 250 meters out onto the ice, grid south, away from the Station and SuperDARN, and then back when it’s time to disassemble. All power is supplied by “Larry”, the Honda generator pictured below. Larry is a heavy sucker, I’ll say that for him, but he has enough juice to run both the telescope and four scintillometers for four hours, at which point he needs to be filled with gasoline again.

Once the gear was transported to SuperDARN, the next step was to build and bury the wooden posts that the scintillometers (one of two pieces of the LANDIT experiment, the other being the telescope) would be mounted to. The distances between the posts are carefully measured, and specially chosen to probe certain specific heights in the atmosphere. More on that later.

Walking out from SuperDARN to inspect the generator at the LANDIT experiment site.

All power to the experiment is supplied by a 2 kW generator (“Larry”). The wooden posts in the background host solar scintillometers.

Next, it was time to inspect, assemble and test the telescope control case, and complete the insulation that would protect all the sensitive wires coming out of the case. The case itself would be warmed with a dynamic controller (blue box below), so the wires would need to be kept warm on their way to their destination. After all the pains to bring this equipment across the world, careful precautions to protect it against the cold were needed, so this stage took quite a bit of effort. After all, the last thing I’d want would be to take the telescope outside, and have it immediately break due to cold shock.

Testing the response of the controller that powers the heat to the Pelican case.

The completed, sealed Pelican case, with insulated bundles containing all the wires!

The finished product! Another angle on how the embedded wires connect to scintillometers and telescope.

Finally, it was time to prepare the telescope itself.

View of the LANDIT scope inside the SuperDARN work area. A little ice can be seen on the thermal tape, following an initial on-ice test of the focuser and initial alignment.

Testing the ability of the telescope (and the operator) to acquire and track stars during the daytime. With bright reflections from the ice, this would be a very demanding task!

Finally, it was time to go to the ice. I deployed the scintillometers on the posts to track the Sun, powered by Larry (black box) and the Pelican case.

And at last, the telescope itself! Pictured below is the complete setup.

Many difficulties ensued, of course, commensurate with deploying sensitive equipment into a very harsh environment. I won’t bore you with those, but there was a lot of sled-dragging back and forth, between the warm lab area and the cold operational area, to figure out and beat down the problems, one by one, as they arose.

A view of the telescope after one deployment to the ice. The ice formation on the focus knob tended to lock the focus configuration, making it difficult to adjust.

But that’s what science is all about… experimentation, testing and re-experimentation! After all, if it were easy to deploy an optical telescope to the South Pole… this telescope probably wouldn’t be the only optical telescope in existence there. Or so I console myself.