Passover Seder

 

Being down at the South Pole can be tough. We miss a lot of annual events that we are used to celebrating with existing friends and family. While there are only two Jewish folks that I know of on station, 17/41 showed up to celebrate Passover on Monday. It was a pretty cool to see so many people come out. 

We did not do the full 4-5 hour meal. We skipped over lots of parts, but the heart of it was all there. The cup for Elijah, inviting him in with the station door open, the stolen afikoman, and, perhaps my favorite, raw horseradish root instead of horseradish for the Maror. Wow, that really cleared up the sinuses. Thankfully, KLS has been preparing me for years for this by feeding me raw garlic cloves.

2024 South Pole Passover Seder

Before sunset - March 20/21st

I just found a few lost photos from just before sunset on March 22nd. 

 

The first one is from March 20th, two days before sunset. The sun was hugging the horizon and we were looking like we were going to have an amazing display of colors. Instead, about 16 hours after that first photo, a storm rolled in. No colors, no visibility, no nada.

 

March 20th

March 21st

It's been a tough week. At the start of the week, I was feeling sick and scaled my workouts way back. Then, we had a bunch of network changes that caused a ton of extra work. In the long term, it will be worth it. In the short term, I'm tired. Just as we wrapped up those network changes, we lost power for the third time since I arrived here in February. The power plant generators are being fixed and improved for the long haul, but there have been some hiccups along the way. I am really grateful to have finally arrived at the weekend.  My weekend kicked off with a movie and winning trivia with Mark D and Andrew W.

2:45pm - how much light do we get in the afternoon?

At 2:45pm, this was taken from the same location and direction as the morning photo.

Without any fancy camera tricks, it is quite dark outside. At 2:45pm, the photo above is pretty much accurate of what the human eye can see. You can maybe make out a bump that is a building. 

Technically, we are in astrological twilight, which means the sun is 18 degrees below the horizon. The other twilights that we already passed are civil twilight (6 degrees below the horizon) and nautical twilight (12 degrees below).

In two weeks, we'll be in full dark.

One of my fellow winterovers between plumbing jobs, one of the Buff Boiz Karpet Kinz, Rawlynn E.

8:45am - how much light do we get in the morning?

 

The view from the elevated station at 8:45am.

 

When we take photos of auroras, we usually use long exposures to make the auroras pop more. It makes it look like there is more light than there really is.  I wanted to show folks what things really look like right now so here is a photo from 8:45am this morning. From the elevated station, about three stories up, I pretty much can't make out the near by snow or even the buildings in the distance unless there is a light on the building.

Personally, this is my first slower week at work. I am glad things are slowing down a bit so I can take a little more time for myself and get centered. Hopefully, I can find more time to get outside.

First Aurora Australis!!!!!!!

Auroras over the South Pole observation deck. All the boxes are some of our food for the winter that we are storing there because our elevator broke.

We saw our first Southern Lights / Aurora Australis today (aurora borealis is in the northern hemisphere). 

Just after lunch, someone said there were auroras outside. Catching them can be a fluke now because all of the windows are boarded up. I was getting ready for a nap, but mustered the energy to throw on a jacket and head outside to see the first auroras of the season. I am using a new camera and have not figured out all the settings yet. Figuring them out in the cold and dark wasn't as successful as I would have liked. I headed back inside after a quick five minutes to thaw out and run my hands under warm water.

Auroras over top of the South Pole station.

Auroras over the South Pole summer camp from the A4 exit.

After a few minutes getting dressed properly, getting some hand warmers, and messing with camera settings, I switched to another view point for the auroras with Andrew W and Brian K. I still struggled with the autofocus, but captured a few moments of beauty in the sky. If you haven't seem them before, they are like vertical clouds dancing in the sky. The fainter ones are often mistaken for clouds until you get to know what you are looking for. They are truly one of my favorite part of winters down here. I can watch them dance for as long as I can stay warm.

This is supposed to be a high aurora activity year and the South Pole is right under the aurora 'rings' where they are most active. I am very, very hopeful for them this winter.

Looking over at B1 berthing from A4 berthing.

Brian K catching his first view of auroas this winter.

Sunset - March 22nd. The sun won't rise for 183 days.

The view out my berthing window to the geographic Pole. Look for the big flag between the two building on the left. 

The sun set for the one and only time this year on March 22nd at 6:41pm. We did not get to see it because it was unbelievably cloudy that day. Around 3 days later, the clouds finally broke and we had some amazing colors on the horizon. We won't see the sun again for 183 days when it comes up around the fall equinox - September 21st or 22nd.

 Looking out to our skiway (runway for planes with skis).

A diagram that helps explain why the polar regions have extended periods without sunrises or sunsets.

I thought sunrise and sunset would be like McMurdo where the sun rose and set each day for a month or so before dropping behind the horizon for good. However, because the Earth’s axis of rotation is tilted 23.5 degrees with respect to the path of its orbit around the Sun, the North and South Poles only get one sunset a year.

The office

My office

Despite the fun adventure side of this job, I am really here to work and this is where the work happens. My desk is the one you can see the monitors on. I share the office with a network engineer who sits on the right. We both cover as a help desk for anyone that walks in the door.

The computer lab right outside my office.

Right outside our office is a computer lab. Most work centers don't have enough computers for all their employees so some come here to do small tasks. Others use it to stay in touch with folks back home. However, the program now lets laptops and cellphones connect to the Internet when the satellite is up so most folks use that to keep in touch with the home front. That is a huge change from when I was on the Ice 12 years ago. Back then, you were really disconnected except for email. Due to some major Internet upgrades, you can now use video chatting like FaceTime and Zoom.

I don't know all the details, but we don't use starlink here. They are using it a little bit at McMurdo. They have tested it here. One person said that it interfered with the science, someone else said it didn't. I don't what is accurate, but having non-stop Internet here would really change the experience for better and worse.