Cold Life

I have been in New-Zealand for over a week now and it is awesome! The flight back from McMurdo in the C-17 was smooth and we landed late at night at the Christchurch international airport. They dropped us of at the terminal and our bags came on the conveyor belt! Just like for all other passengers. We then had to go through border control. The standard question that they ask is: ” How long have you been on the ice for?”. And then… the first steps in the real world again. Since then, the sea, sun and fresh fruits have been great…
This will be my final blogentry. Thank you, everyone, for your support during this long year!

New Zealand Golden Bay

That’s it! I left Southpole on Saturday, after a stay of over 12 months (with one week of R&R in February…).
Now I am in McMurdo about to catch the next flight to New-Zealand. Flowers, fresh food and warm weather!

The South Pole station as seen through the cockpit window of the LC-130!

The trans-Antarctic mountains!

That is how many people are now living on this station! We (the winter-overs), are now outnumbered by the fresh people! The first LC-130 Herc landed on Saturday and deposited about 40 summer people! They also brought more freshies, like bananas and divine peaches. 15 days to go before I can step into an LC-130 and leave this place after over 9 months!

Passengers debarking the LC-130 at the SPS airport...

The LC-130

Today was the day, two Baslers showed up for refueling and to pick up 3 of out co-winter overs…
Strange to see new people!

Basler in the mist...

Queing up for fuel at the South pole gas station

Fueling the Basler plane

Now that the Sun is definitely back, we can look around and notice the snowdrifts that have accumulated in the darkness of winter. The IceCube drill-camp was used to drill the 2.5km deep IceCube holes and it was dragged (now that is IceCube has officially finished the construction phase) to a designated location, about 1.5 kilometers from the station. We went out to check the drifts over the structures…

Snow drifts behind the IceCube drill camp.

Drill camp and the Sun!

Since I am scheduled to leave the South Pole on November 15th, I now have officially two more months to go!
Even though the Sun is getting close to the horizon, the temperatures still easily reach – 70 degrees Celsius this week.

The South Pole Station against the pink sunrise sky

Looking at the South Pole station from the ARO (Atmospheric Research Observatory)

Here is a picture of a nice aurora against the dark blue sky… dawn!

Aurora and dawn...

Incredible, after this moon we will be seeing already a hint of dawn at the horizon! Twighlight will take over a month until the Sun comes above the horizon on the 21st September. meanwhile,
here are some more shots of the IceCube Lab and the station in moonlight.

ICL with porch light on.

The station in the mist...

Endless snow in moonlight

This is a time-lapse of an aurora. It consists of 157 pictures.
Each picture is taken at ISO 800, 16mm, f2.8 and exposure time of 12 seconds.
Wait time between each picture is 1 second.

The next time-lapse shows part of the station. There are 121 pictures, ISO 640, 16mm, f2.8 and exposure time 13 seconds. Wait time between each picture is 1 second.