The last couple days were spent with a lot of the team working together on a last-minute overhaul of our power system. The previous system, where all the solar panels charged all the batteries, which powered all the things, has been split in two. By separating our sensitive electronics, we’ve reduced noise and increased performance. These are the photos I collected while being busy not working, in between stints of being busy working. […]
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I’ve been busy over the last few days, so haven’t taken many photos. Here’s a small selection of what’s been happening. We’ve also had a bit of weather: some heavy winds and actual snow. I know you’re thinking, “well, there’s lots of snow in Antarctica”, but mostly it blows around rather than falling from the sky. […]
Hello who ever you are, (no really I have no idea who reads this) So this morning they launched a Path Finder to test if the float winds have set up, unfortunately I wondered outside just after they released it so I didn’t get the actually launch but got to watch it drift up into there sky. There is always something breath taking about watching a balloon go up, well in that I get thing knot in my stomach going “dear god, I’m going to attach years to something like that, and I have as little control over where it floats as I do over that little path finder.” So yeah, um, breath taking. […]
Hello Gental Reader (looker?), So I told Steve I would do the blog post today…. and then I didn’t get all my photos from today uploaded, so I’m going to do an old tristan’s photos round up, and then post another one tomorrow morning after the images make there way off the ice. […]
Yesterday we went outside to the porch for some testing. We ended up spending much of the time debugging, when we really hoped to demonstrate that everything works. Not quite there yet, but we still have time. While we were out there, EBEX went out on its deck to observe the sky for a while. It was fun to see the neighbouring telescopes. Finally, because Juan and Greg will be leaving us, we took a little time to pose for group photos. […]
After receiving her official crane operator/rigger certification, Natalie had to bask in her own awesomeness for a while. Otherwise, we had a group meeting and tackled a list of small tasks. […]
Many of us spent a lot of yesterday outside. That’s because we were out on the dance floor again, and had to move BLAST around for some tests. We had to point at a star, and adjust the pointing to track it as the sky rotates. In the afternoon, Team Rotate really got into action as we did some 360 degree scans to calibrate the magnetometer (a fancy compass). Because this job can involve a lot of waiting around, some of us spent the time constructing a sort of igloo. In the evening, Barth and I headed out to the pressure ridges for a tour. This is an area near Scott Base where the sea ice collides with itself (caused by interaction with the nearby land and permanent ice) to create some pretty dramatic formations. […]
Super-TIGER had to go outside yesterday for its compatibility test. Because we’re in the front of the highbay, this meant we had to go out to the dance floor to get out of the way. While out there we worked on more attitude sensor tests, trying to find a bright star (Canopus) with the star cameras. […]
There wasn’t a lot of action in the lab yesterday: Juan did some some more arts and crafts covering the sun shields in aluminized mylar, and Tyr balanced the inner frame. To supplement this crop of photos, I went outside and took a panorama of the LDB (Long Duration Balloon) site. In the evening, Greg, Laura, and I also climbed up Ob(servation) Hill, while Barth and Tristan were scared off by the heavy and cold wind. […]
After a weather abort the day before, BLAST-Pol took a trip outside yesterday to the "dance floor". This is a wooden platform that’s away from buildings so that GPS antennas work better, in the sun so that sun sensors work better, and away from ferromagnetic objects so that the magnetometer works better. Basically it’s where all of our coarse pointing sensors work better. And so we go there to test and calibrate them. […]