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.

Getting on the LC-130.

In addition to carrying people back and forth these planes also carry equipment, food and fuel for the South Pole Station (and waste the other way). Over 200 LC-130 flights are made to the pole each year, and a plane will typically have approximately 2,000 pounds of fuel syphoned off from it after it lands – this is what the South Pole generators run on, and they need several hundred thousand pounds of fuel to make it through the winter.

A 15,000 lb IceCube surface-to-DOM cable aboard our LC-130.

Flying with me was a 15,000 lb IceCube Surface-to-DOM cable. We need one of these for each of our deployments/strings (we are hoping to do at least 14 deployments this season). IceCube is a pretty massive project, and requires many cargo flights of fuel and equipment in order to succeed.

During the flight to the pole over the Transantarctic Mountains, I saw some really neat cloud formations. They are called “altocumulus standing lenticular clouds.” I was told that they are fairly common in mountainous areas. I thought they were pretty spectacular!

Altocumulus standing lenticular clouds over the Transantarctic Mountains.

Altocumulus standing lenticular clouds often form on the lee side of mountain ranges as moisture condenses at the crest of a standing wave in air currents.

-41 deg C

SOUTH POLE STATION, ANTARCTICA– The Norwegian-US Traverse, Year 2, Begins! We still haven’t started on our big trip, (the actual traverse), but we are getting closer and closer! This seems amazing given how far we’ve come already. I started my trip early the morning of October 25, first driving to Boston from my home in Vermont, with my husband, Mike. Our wedding was September 27, so we just missed spending our first month anniversary together.

From Boston, I flew first to Newark, then on to Los Angeles, where I spent a couple of hours waiting for my flight to Auckland, New Zealand. This is where things became a little bizarre. First as I was waiting in line to go through security, a very large limo pulled up to the terminal and a whole entourage started piling out. By this time in my trip (which was just the beginning, really), I was already too hungry and tired and homesick to care, and grabbed some food and went to my gate without waiting to see who it was.

As it so happens, the very famous person, hip hop super star Ice Cube was also flying to Auckland, with his entourage. Ice Cube sat in first class, while about 15 members of his entourage were back in coach where I was sitting. They were very, very entertaining for the first few hours of the 13 hour flight, and then thankfully fell asleep. The funniest thing for me is that when I tell people heading to Antarctica that I saw Ice Cube on the plane, everyone first assumes that it’s IceCube, the neutrino telescope that is being run at the South Pole, not the international hip hop/movie star.

In Christchurch, I had a few busy days gathering up the supplies we will need for the traverse, and meeting up with the rest of the group as we were all coming in from all over. There’s Lou, our driller, who flew in from Montana, Tom, the field team leader, who came from Vermont, Glen, coming from Colorado, and the Norwegians, Rune, Svein, Einar and Kjetil, who were coming from Tromso, Norway. The last member of our group to arrive in Christchurch was John, who had to make a last-minute, unexpected detour to Cape Town, South Africa to take care of some business for the Norwegian Polar Institute there. Compared to John’s trip, mine was nothing to complain about. He didn’t even get to see Ice Cube in person.

Tom Neumann, our fearless leader, in line to check in bags for the flight from Christchurch to McMurdo, which we had to do the day before our flight.

In Christchurch, we all worked finding the various odds and ends we would need to find in New Zealand that we hadn’t already shipped, and that we wouldn’t find in Antarctica, including a 5 m ladder, 400 loaves of bread (Norwegians really, really like bread), potholders, a spatula for pancakes, 20 large batteries, and 80 pounds of coffee (most of us really, really like coffee). This at time proved rather amusing, as it meant either Tom or Glen had to drive on the “wrong” side of the road in our rented van, sometimes with oddly sized loads.

This first group of us is participating in the first phase of our traverse from South Pole Station to the Norwegian Antarctic base, Troll. Phase One is to recover the four tracked vehicles we are using, which are currently located 300 km from the South Pole, where we are now. Svein, Kjetil and Rune are the cracker-jack mechanics who will fix two of the vehicles, which are currently non-operational, and replace the differentials (this being the part that broke several time last season) in all of the vehicles. Lou and I are going to drill an ice core while the mechanics do the repairs. The spot where we will be working is called Camp Winter, since that is where everything spent the last season.

Hand drilling an ice core.

After everything is fixed and we are done with our core, we will pack everything up, and head back here to the South Pole where we will unfortunately lose Kjetil and Rune and Glen. Rune’s wife is expecting a baby soon, so it’s important to get him back home to Norway before that happens. The rest of us will head to Troll with another group of researchers meeting us here in December. Then we will begin Phase Two, which is getting from South Pole to the coast, drilling ice cores, taking radar data, and collecting snow samples along the way.

The area we are passing through has not been visited since the 1960’s, and some spots we are covering have never been traveled over before. Our measurements will help determine whether this part of Antarctica is growing in mass (more snow is falling here due to rising temperatures), staying the same, or shrinking in mass.

I was able to spend a couple of hours roaming around Christchurch my last day before leaving for “The Ice,” and so I hit my favorite spots (I had spent quite a lot of time in Christchurch the last time I was in Antarctica). I went to rub Roald Amundsen’s nose at the Canterbury Museum (there is a bust of him there, and it is tradition to rub his nose for good luck), and then spent some time walking around the botanic gardens. I will try to remember what it is like to be warm, to smell flowers, and to be surrounded by color in the next few months. On these trips, I am always amazed by the sensory deprivation I experience.

Roald Amundsen’s bust at the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, NZ. His nose is shiny from people rubbing it for good luck.

Plants from the botanic gardens in Christchurch…

Plants from the botanic gardens in Christchurch…

…where we all spent our last day roaming around or laying in the grass, enjoying the sun.

After one delayed flight, we left for McMurdo a day later than expected, where we spent another crazy few days gathering, sorting, and packing all the food we would need for the entire trip (phase one and two). This was usually pretty amusing, trying to compromise between Norwegian and American tastes. We are bringing lots and lots of fish, aforementioned bread, rye crackers, brunost (Norwegian “brown cheese” or whey cheese), sardines, some other Norwegian snacks, and luckily a few packages of hot dogs (my request!). The amount of food is mind boggling, as is the amount of toilet paper (about 300 rolls). We won’t have an opportunity to resupply while we are traveling, so it’s important to get it right.

Lou and Einar going for a quick hike up Observation Hill in McMurdo.

The cargo system in McMurdo can be a bear to deal with, meaning that every box is weighed and measured, sometimes multiple times, and entered into the system before it can head out. In addition, we (mostly me) had to keep track of what was going into each box for our own records. The result is that we are very well organized now though, and have sorted the food so that for every week, there are three boxes that contain all our food. We can just grab the boxes and bring them inside the vehicles, and not spend time outside (where we are expecting temperatures around -50deg C in the beginning). That will be worth it in the end.

At the top of Observation Hill is a cross dedicated to members of Scott’s expedition who died on their return trip from the South Pole.

So far, we are all getting along marvelously. Somehow the nine of us, with our diverse backgrounds, all share a similar sense of humor, and work to take care of one another. The Norwegians have been particularly impressed with my skills in the Norwegian language (I had Norwegian roommates in college), even though most of what I remember is a little less than polite. We have all had a lot of experience in the field, and we all enjoy what we do. Who could ask for anything else?

Kjetil and John hiking up Observation Hill, with Mt. Erebus, and active volcano, in the background.

An Iridium flare flashes above the South Pole Telescope. (These flares occur when the sun reflects off of the Iridium satellites used for remote communication in Antarctica.)

NASA’s Ultra Long Duration Balloon. Once released, these balloons expand to the size of a stadium.

These light sensors (Digital Optical Modules, or DOMs) are placed deep within the ice in order to detect the blue light emitted when neutrino particles collide with atoms in the ice.

Ask an astronomer to describe the perfect place to put a telescope, and here’s what she’ll tell you: Make it cold, make it dark, make it high-altitude, and make it remote. In short, make it Antarctica.

All light-based astronomy is vulnerable to interference from the atmosphere, the same jittery effect that makes stars twinkle. Much like trying to see the bottom of a swimming pool, observing space through the moving air masses in our atmosphere causes images to wiggle and warp.

The very attributes that make Antarctica inhospitable to life make it ideal for astronomy. The high altitude means there’s less atmosphere to look through. The cold, dry air makes for minimal water vapor and less atmospheric emission of infrared light, both of which interfere with observations. Best of all, 24-hour darkness in winter means no daily temperature oscillations, reducing air currents.

The South Pole Telescope, located at the Amundsen-Scott Station near the South Pole, takes advantage of these clear skies to search for evidence of dark energy amid galaxy clusters. Dark energy is theorized to be a form of energy that is pushing everything in the universe apart.

To further reduce atmospheric interference, some astronomers use balloons to bring their instruments 35,000 feet into the air. Inexpensive compared to satellite-based astronomy, balloon-borne astronomy is ideally suited to Antarctica, where circumpolar winds high in the stratosphere carry balloons steadily and predictably around the pole.

One of the biggest astronomical efforts in Antarctica is actually taking place under the ice. IceCube is an array of ultra-sensitive light detectors buried a mile deep into the Antarctic ice sheet. These detectors can spot the passage of high-energy neutrinos, particles created by the most violent events in the universe, allowing astronomers to see impossibly distant cosmic events by detecting the neutrinos they create.

ICE-T on Dome C
An international team of astronomers have their sites set on another location in Antarctica—a formidably remote location known as Dome C—for construction of a new telescope. High on the Antarctic plateau, Dome C boasts atmospheric conditions that are even calmer—and thereby clearer—than those at the South Pole. “A telescope there would perform as well as a much larger one anywhere else on Earth,” says Will Saunders, astronomer at the Anglo-Australian Observatory. “It’s nearly as good as being in space.” The telescope in the works for Dome C, called ICE-T, will search for exoplanets, earth-like planets in other solar systems.

An aerial view of the South Pole with the South Pole Station to the left of the runway and IceCube to the right.

A string of 60 light detectors called “DOMs” (digital optical modules) are lowered deep into the Antarctic ice sheet.

DOMs under construction. The board stacks have been mounted and will be sealed inside the complete sphere.

The IceCube project is designed to detect high-energy neutrinos, particles created by the most violent events in the universe: black holes, gamma ray bursts, and supernovas. The detector serves as a deep-space telescope, allowing scientists to see impossibly distant cosmic events by detecting the neutrinos they generate.

IceCube consists of an array of ultrasensitive light detectors buried roughly a mile deep into the Antarctic ice sheet. To build it, researchers drill into the ice sheet with a hot water drill, then sink a vertical string of light detectors—think of an oversized string of Christmas lights—into the water-filled hole before it freezes over again.

Why put a neutrino detector under ice? The polar ice sheet supplies, naturally, the main ingredient needed for a neutrino detector: a large space that is totally dark and totally transparent.

Though neutrinos are zooming around us all the time—a million billion of them stream through your body each second—they can only be detected when they crash directly into the nucleus of an atom. The collision creates a faint glimmer of blue light, called Cherenkov radiation, which passes easily through the transparent ice to be “seen” by one or more of IceCube’s 4,800 light detectors. By tracking the path of these incoming neutrinos, scientists get an unprecedented view: a neutrino-based picture of the universe.

The IceCube Laboratory (ICL).

The IceCube array shown in relation to the drill camp and the bedrock beneath.