Sunday 27 February 2011

Internet access.

We've been testing a continuous internet connection, powered by a new
parabolic antenna on the roof. It's temporary, it's going to go down
soon due to several technical and environmental issues, at least one
major problem being that the cold will freeze the electronics. So I
took the opportunity to post up some of my better photos below, and
here is a list of what they are:

Top. Domenico, as we make for a shelter a few days ago.
2. Me, contemplating going out in the storm
3. Feb 20th.
4. My camera, after taking photos for forty minutes outside. The
frost just sublimates straight off in minutes leaving no water behind.
5. Map
6. One of the many departures as the summer campaign ends.
7. My lab, on a tidy day.
8. Ilann wearing an EEG cap and thinking hard.
9. Domenico, patient as I work on getting good signals from the EEG cap.
10. The EPICA tunnel, where an ice coring rig drilled 3.2 km down
through the ice, extracting a core of the ice to be analysed for
atmospheric gases. The ice gave a year-by year account of
antarctica's atmosphere as far back as 800,000 years ago.
11. Ice crystal in the EPICA tunnel.
12. Air traffic control at McMurdo base. On skis so it can be moved as
the ice thins.
13. Eroded granite at Terra Nova bay. The landscape is covered in
sculpted rocks like this one.
14. My last climbing opportunity for the year.
15. Arrival of the Raid at Dome C.
16. My bedroom, more comfortable than anything the NHS has ever provided.
17. Twin otter taxiing across the ice of Terra Nova bay.
18. Saltire on the base.
19. Halo - a rainbow made by ice crystals instead of water droplets.
20. Modelling this season's EEG wear.
21. Mount Abbott, taken from a spur of the mountain. Cape Washington
and the Campbell glacier are on the upper left, Mount Melbourne, a
quiescent volcano, seems a bit hidden by the lenticular clouds. To the
far left is the browning glacier and further round out of view the
drogalski ice tongue. Many of these features were named for a party
of Robert Scott's first expedition, who were dropped off here to
search for a mountain pass into the interior and had to be abandoned
as a storm threatened the ship. The party later made it on foot to
the Ross ice shelf to rejoin the expedition. Amazing story.
22. Penguins at Terra Nova bay. I wrote about this couple in an earlier
post. The water in the picture was, two months before, the frozen
airstrip the planes landed on, as in the photo above.
23. The Skua, in Terra Nova Bay.
24. Last DC3 departing. Their lowest permissible operating
temperature is -54 degrees C. When they started their engines it was
-53.8. It took 45 minutes to get them up to temperature for
take-off. They don't normally smoke like that!
25. The winterover crew, our first meal after the last of the summer
crew departed.
26. Feb 8-9th.
27. Concordia base and astronomy sites panorama, february 8th.
28. Working on one of the remote solar powered seismo sensors, a long
and very very bumpy 4km flexmobile ride from the base.
--
Concordia station 75°06'06''S - 123°23'43''E
Satellite uploads at: 02.30, 09.00 and 14.00 UTC
Local time UTC + 8

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