Yesterday evening Juan, Laura, Lorenzo, Tristan, and I took a tour of the pressure ridges down by Scott Base. This is where the sea ice collides with the permanent ice shelf and forms mini ice mountains. It’s a pretty impressive sight, even from afar as we drive past it on the way to LDB. I was excited to see it up close. There were also a group of seals (with pups!) sunning themselves outside the ridges.
Back at work, the big news was that our full allotment of liquid helium arrived, which meant we could start to fully cool the detectors. Matt, Mark, Elio, and Nick heroically very stayed late to finish the transfers (Elio was especially heroic, coming in at the normal time this morning). Otherwise, Juan finished mylarizing his scoop, Lorenzo opened up the star cameras, calibration devices were being set up, and code continued to be coded.
Update: added a few pictures of me, lifted from Tristan’s flickr stream. They are labeled in the manner he uses (ie none at all).
-
- Juan cleans up the joint
-
- The guts of one of the star camera computers
-
- One of these things is not like the others
-
- Sometimes I visit the people beneath me
-
- Barth is surprised (?) while talking to Tristan
-
- Juan in his completely mylarized scoop
-
- The tease dewar
-
- Kevlar thread, tying the scoop mylar to the struts
-
- Lorenzo’s starcam station
-
- Elio and Nick mount the solar panels
-
- It’s long, annoying work
-
- Lorenzo, concentrating deeply
-
- The first helium fill. Everybody stands around talking about it
-
- The transfer tube isn’t snowy because it’s well insulated. The vent tube is because it’s not
-
- After demonstrating the correct solemnity for the occasion, Matt switches to “Sweet, we have helium” face
-
- Snowy vent tube
-
- The view from our starting point, at Scott Base
-
- Lorenzo
-
- Juan
-
- Off we go
-
- The slightly-rolling foothills of the pressure ridges
-
- Then the ridges begin, in their violently twisted glory
-
- Towards White Rock
-
- The sun over Ob Hill, on a great warm sunny day
-
- Interesting Formation
-
- Tristan, and his fancy camera
-
- Lorenzo again
-
- Laura and her poofy hat. Isn’t it far too poofy?
-
- Our guide, Mandy
-
- Juan, alone in the ridges
-
- Nothingness
-
- Ob Hill, from the other side of the ridges
-
- There was a good rainbow in the clouds around the sun
-
- Laura Sees Seals
-
- Hello, Seal
-
- Just hanging out in the sun
-
- Tristan’s Face
-
- Mandy again, getting a good look
-
- A nursing pup
-
- Juan catches up, in his own sweet time
-
- Flags (and footsteps) mark the route
-
- On this sunny day, there are a lot of salty sea puddles
-
- Crack in the ice, and Scott Base just up the hill
Why are most of the flags green while the one by the nursing pup is red?
As far as I can tell, red and green flags have the same meaning: “It’s okay to walk/drive/be here”. For most of the tour, the flags alternated, so I bet they were put in that way, but the pattern was lost during maintenance.
There are other flags with different meanings: Black (DANGER!), Blue (Fuel Pipeline), Yellow (You can pee here). So, I’m going to go with Matt’s theory that whoever developed the flag code was red-green colour blind.