SOUTH POLE, ANTARCTICA– I am on my way to the South Pole for the 6th time. This year IceCube is hoping to deploy 18 strings. (We are sending down enough equipment to deploy 20). At the end of last season we had deployed a total of 59 strings, and we have two years of construction left.

As we took off from Madison I took this photograph of the University of Wisconsin campus and Lake Mendota – we had a big snow storm earlier in the week which actually closed down the university for the first time in decades.

On the flight from Los Angeles to Sydney I flew down on the new Airbus A380, a double-decker plane that can hold lots and lots of people. Many of my colleagues have already flown down on this plane, and at least one of them said the plane was airborne for an hour before she realized that it had taken off. I particularly liked the tailcam where you could watch the plane takeoff on the monitor in front of your seat.

The Airbus A380.

Sydney (from the tailcam) from just before we landed.

I also took this movie of the tailcam feed as the plane took off – I am not sure I believe my coworker that she didn’t notice the plane taking off, but it was a neat flight.