Dr. DuVernois Blog

End of the Antarctic Season

2012-01-22T18:08:00.001-06:00

Going to wrap up for this season, almost certainly back to Pole again next year for a deeper drill, and a couple of ARA stations. Thanks much!

Additional South Pole/Antarctica Q&A

2012-01-22T17:39:00.002-06:00

These are the final batch of student questions and answers for this season. Some questions may have been paraphrased...

1. Why all the costumes for the New Years Party? Isn't that more of a Halloween thing?

Well, folks tend to dress up in costumes for all of the parties at the South Pole. I haven't been there for a Halloween Party yet, but I imagine it'll be similar. Basically folks at Pole work very hard, normal is a six day work week and typically more than eight hours per day in a harsh environment. So when it's time for a party, folks go all out. The bright, anime-like, wigs seem quite particular to Antarctic parties, not sure about their origin, but they were popular the first time I was on the ice, in McMurdo, in 2002 so it's not a new thing.

2. Who gets to go to Antarctic for these experiments?

Within the experimental groups, there are some folks who obviously want to go to Pole, and others who will do anything to avoid it. So you take the former group of people, trying to match skills to tasks that need to be done on the ice. Some people get into the habit of going each year, either their job really is tied to work on the ice, or they enjoy it. Most of the people at the South Pole aren't working on a specific scientific experiment, they're there to work at the station. They're hired by the contractor which runs the station, through this season it had been Raytheon Polar Services Corporation and in the future with be Lockheed Martin. These folks could be cooks, vehicle mechanics, heating repair people, dishwashers, computer network technicians, or a host of other jobs. The job gets them to the Pole.

3. Beards?

They are pretty common on guys in Antarctica, though you have to start off with "academics" and "rock-climbers" as the stereotypical groups of people headed down there, and beards are more common with those groups than with the average person. Then add into it, "keeping your rather delicate cheeks warms" and perhaps some level of "two two-minute showers per week" and beards seem more reasonable.

4. What's up with all of the weird rings and stuff around the sun?

A number of solar phenomena are much more common at the South Pole than they are elsewhere. In the same way in which rainbows, and double rainbows, are common in Hawaii, sundogs, solar pillars, and solar arcs are common at the Pole. These solar lighting phenomena are caused by light scattering from ice crystals that are relatively close to the viewer. At the Pole where "blowing ice crystals" is a common weather description, these light displays are also relatively common, though super-impressive. See Wikipedia (this article and links from this article) for more information.

5. If I wanted to go to Antarctica, what should I do?

There are basically four routes to the ice:
- Science: A few undergraduate students get to go to Antarctica on research projects, but by and large it's graduate students and more senior researchers. So to get there via this route requires dedication to a research topic that happens to involve work in Antarctica.
- Support: This one is easier, there is a job fair each year (Raytheon previously, Lockheed in the future) with jobs ranging from GA (general assistant, typically 18-20 year old with no particular work experience) through the skilled crafts (carpenters, HVAC, mechanics, computer help desk...) and through management (shop foreman, station manager...). A good fraction of people are primarily interested in Antarctica above and beyond the job particulars.
- Tourism: Yes, you can hop on a boat and see the Antarctic Peninsula (the part below South America, it's a lot warmer than the rest of the continent and has more wildlife on it), or book a flight through one of the adventure tourist shops and fly into the Pole. Or fly to sixty miles from the Pole and ski the rest of the way in. Or parachute out over the South Pole. It's not cheap, but plenty of folks are doing it.
- Exploration: You're not going to be first to ski in to the South Pole. But no one has bicycled to the Pole yet (oops, looks like it happened a couple of hours ago). Driving to the Pole (in a Toyota pickup) is a normal thing now, but no one has made it in a hovercraft or driving a 2CV or behind the wheel of an art car. Find a niche, find some sponsors, and don't forget to bring a satellite phone with you in case things go horribly wrong.

Arthur's Pass (NZ) by rail

2012-01-19T22:14:00.003-06:00

For a day of R&R in New Zealand, took the train up to Arthur's Pass, in the Southern Alps, and did a little bit of sightseeing and hiking.

This is a Kea, the world's only alpine parrot. I wasn't able to get a good shot of its bright red under-wing plumage because there were multiple parrots ganging up on me and trying to steal my lunch.

As an aside, I had a beer and a pork pie snack in the late afternoon in an Arthur's Pass restaurant/cafe called the Wobbly Kea. The music playing in that place definitely transported me to a time and place far from the South Island. I sat down to Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue" which smoothly segued into "Rhinestone Cowboy" then "Coward of the County" and finally "Jolene" before I moved to an outside table. Don't get me wrong, "Jolene" is a great song and I do respect The Man in Black, but somehow it was all just too far off for a alpine cafe in New Zealand. When I went back in to drop off my dishes, the stereo was off.

Christchurch in January

2012-01-19T22:04:00.003-06:00

While I was on the ice there was another moderate-sized aftershock on the 23rd of December and there was additional damage in the Christchurch area and the coastal area there as well. I did get to experience a 5.2 magnitude aftershock while I was in town. Woke me up in the early morning hours.

Construction and destruction ongoing...

A city of containers. I think containers are one of the great, little-heralded, inventions of the 20th century and if you wanted to ever be extremely bored, I could talk about them for hours. Or just check out Wikipedia on the intermodal container, and then follow some links from there...

Later in January, Christchurch will host the World Busker Festival, but there were a good number of street performers already in the earthquake-shattered city. This Scottish gentleman was juggling knives.

This gal was a (slightly-) moving angel sculpture.

And a simple duck was amazingly fascinating to someone who had been on the ice for weeks...

Out of Antarctica

2012-01-19T21:52:00.003-06:00

Well, I've been back in the States for well over a week, need to finish up my Antarctica blog postings a touch off of real-time. I'm going to blame the SOPA protests for the latest of these entries.

To fly away, we first caught a Herc from the South Pole up to McMurdo. The flight was a day late due to mechanical problems with another Herc the day before. In this shot we're just landed in McMurdo, and the plane is being onloaded. The ski-do will take away the pee jar from the plane.

Hours later, our next ride comes into town. A C-17 air force transport bringing people and gear into McMurdo, and will take us north to New Zealand by morning.

Good-sized crowd of folks waiting for the plane out. Including some people who had been expelled from the continent for bad behavior. Long story...

Cargo on our flight included this prop blade assembly for a Herc. There wasn't an obvious problem with it... And in the foreground some biological and water samples marked "do not freeze" and "keep refrigerated." They were...

Partway through the five hour, 35 degree F, airplane flight. Folks hiding and trying to sleep in their parkas. But green, warm, damp New Zealand awaits!

The journey home

2012-01-07T14:46:00.002-06:00

Am in Christchurch right now, next stop Sydney, Australia, followed by Honolulu, Hawaii. More from there...

So, the Herc windscreen appears to have been fatigue damage rather than a bird strike. Did some touring around New Zealand, more on that too...

And I know I owe some A's for the Q's...

South Pole Departure

2012-01-03T19:05:00.002-06:00

Well, our first flight attempt out of here was yesterday. The plane took off from McMurdo heading for Pole, turned around and landed. They had a cracked windshield, possibly caused by a bird strike on takeoff. Penguins don't fly, so that was probably a skua.

This morning the flight was canceled due to bad weather in McMurdo. But there's a new scheduled flight for dinner time tonight that might work!

Once I'm back to the land of reliable internet, will post pictures from the last few days. And answer the last batch of questions I got. Look for that soon!

I did want to link two excellent articles from the New York Times for the Amundsen 100th anniversary of the achievement of the Pole which also highlight the modern Antarctica. Article and editorial.

January 1, 2012 at the South Pole

2012-01-01T17:39:00.002-06:00

Every year on New Years there is the official "moving of the Pole." The ice sheet that the South Pole Station sits on moves about an inch per day, so at the end of the year it's about 10m (30ft) different. On New Years the official Pole marker is unveiled. Here the station manager (left, Bill) and NSF representative (right, Vladimir) are about to remove the red cloth...
There it is. The nicely machined brass Pole marker that will remain up for a year, and then go into the cabinet of old Pole markers in station.
Most of the folks on station showed up for the (very brief) ceremony. Basically thirty seconds of speech each by three people. Then photo ops...
Here's last year's Pole marker.
And a close up of this year's marker, making clear the 100th anniversary connection with the iconic image 100 years ago.

Work images from the last few days

2011-12-29T12:32:00.002-06:00

Christian doing some antenna testing in the IceCube Lab. That's a bird-cage looking biconical antenna for our downhole vertical polarization measurements.

WiFi propagation testing out in the middle of what will be the ARA37 array. Beautiful solar effects here many days.

Drill camp coming down. Everything needs to be stored for next year, shipped back to the States, or disposed of. We made quite a mess in just a few weeks...

Testing of the downhole receiver strings...

...all of whose parts are sitting out on the IceCube Lab porch to cool off.

Coming up on New Years

2011-12-29T10:46:00.001-06:00

We have a few more instrument strings to deploy and more cargo to ship back to the States. Over the New Years weekend there's the official move of the Pole (the ice sheet is moving about an inch per day) and music & dancing.

Instrument deployment

2011-12-27T18:41:00.001-06:00

We're in a dash against time (the ARA crew leaving Pole on the 3rd of January) to install all of the instrumentation in the ice. Should be doable, but it'll be a busy few days. More from me when we finish...

Windy weekend leads to drifting

2011-12-25T20:58:00.001-06:00

Flagstaffs

2011-12-25T20:54:00.003-06:00

US Antarctic Program flag flapping in the breeze.

All points are North from here.

Antarctic map flagstaff head.

Christma Dinner

2011-12-25T20:48:00.002-06:00

Appetizers served in the hallway before the meal, excellent scallops and smoked trout, along with baked brie. Yum!
Festive Christmas cheer with tablecloths, a DVD of a (gas) fireplace, and everyone dressed up as well as they could. Clean Carhartts...

Beef Wellington, Lobster Tail, potatoes, and rolls. Good desserts too.

Images of drilling

2011-12-24T20:58:00.004-06:00

Drill running, this is the "backside" of the drill, snow melter at right, heaters in middle, and power unit and hot water tank (former dairy tank...) at left.

Advanced level winding hardware, a.k.a. chief driller Dennis Duling.

Snapshot of atmospheric phenomena during drilling. Just had a pocket camera with me and could see anything on its LCD display.

A peek over the wind break.

Kara the driller. "Why are driller helmets so small?"

Race around the world

2011-12-24T19:46:00.003-06:00

For Christmas each year there is a scheduled race, it goes all the way around the world in about 2 miles. You can run it, walk it, ski it, or take a vehicle around, potentially with a float, and costumes are always apropos. The IceCube and ARA group took the IceCube chariot (looks like a Roman chariot) around for the race. It was built by IceCubers a couple of years ago and is darned impressive!

The pirate flag was a nice touch... The large orange flag is a marker flag from IceCube, marks the locations of the 86 IceCube holes, and is sort of a symbol for the project.

Wrapping up the drilling

2011-12-22T20:51:00.002-06:00

Today is Friday at the Pole, and we have a two day weekend for Christmas! Saturday features the legendary Race Around the World and the big Christmas dinner. Sunday is quiet & rest for Christmas Day proper.

We're aiming to finish up the last ARA1 drilling late this evening. It's been a busy day here...

Best early comment on proliferation (Not Antarctica-related)

2011-12-21T17:42:00.000-06:00

The newspapers have published numerous diagrams, not very helpful to the average man, of protons and neutrons doing their stuff, and there has been much reiteration of the useless statement that the bomb 'ought to be put under international control.' But curiously little has been said, at any rate in print, about the question that is of most urgent interest to all of us namely: 'How difficult are these things to manufacture?'...

Had the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism, but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralized police state. If, as seems to be the case, it is a rare and costly object as difficult to produce as a battleship, it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a 'peace that is no peace.'

-- George Orwell, "You and the Atomic Bomb," October 19, 1945

Near white-out conditions

2011-12-20T19:12:00.002-06:00

On the way to and from the ARA1 site to pick up some equipment, this was the view out the window of the pisten bully. Navigating via one flag at a time and dead reckoning.

Wind gusts ripping through our deployment sled tent. Drifting as well around the buildings.

Went and checked on the wind turbines. All are working as designed.

Christian Miki in his natural environment, snow and ice/

Solstice

2011-12-20T15:00:00.002-06:00

Well, it's the shortest day of the year back in the North. Around here, it's light twenty four hours per day. Today it's quite windy, gusts up to thirty knots. No airplanes. No drilling. Indoor work only really. Some of our packing material flew away during the night it was so windy.

Anyway, recently we've been doing some RF pulsing, see the horn antenna in use at the top, and taking the pisten bully out most days. It rides on quite considerable tracks and is comfortable on both roads/paths and on ungroomed snow.

Apropos to our drillers...

2011-12-20T11:21:00.000-06:00

A paragraph composed of sentences from Thomas L. Friedman editorials in the NYT, compiled by freelance writer Tamar Adler.

"And now for a wild prediction. Real men drill wells. Don't know if they're right, but you gotta root for them. Deep down they all know it and they admit it to each other in private. You have to admire it. Because they are anything but crazy. Normally I wouldn't mind. But perfect isn't on the menu anymore. Think about it. This is dangerous. No really. It's pathetic when you think about it but also sad. Yes, yes, yes. No, no, no. Woo, woo, woo. That's embarrassing. Gotta tell you, it's the darndest thing I've ever seen. But you have to love this figure. It's kind of a two-for-one deal. A plus B equals C, but what will C be? Or does he know that I know that he knows? Say what? You guessed it. Not a bad deal. But guess what? There is a wall. Several actually. And that's the drama. But hopeless? Stay tuned. This is going to get interesting."

Today's Latin Lesson

2011-12-20T11:20:00.000-06:00

From "Life of Brian"

[Brian is writing graffiti on the palace wall. The Centurion catches him in the act]
Centurion: What's this, then? "Romanes eunt domus"? People called Romanes, they go, the house?
Brian: It says, "Romans go home. "
Centurion: No it doesn't ! What's the latin for "Roman"? Come on, come on !
Brian: Er, "Romanus" !
Centurion: Vocative plural of "Romanus" is?
Brian: Er, er, "Romani" !
Centurion: [Writes "Romani" over Brian's graffiti] "Eunt"? What is "eunt"? Conjugate the verb, "to go" !
Brian: Er, "Ire". Er, "eo", "is", "it", "imus", "itis", "eunt".
Centurion: So, "eunt" is... ?
Brian: Third person plural present indicative, "they go".
Centurion: But, "Romans, go home" is an order. So you must use... ?
[He twists Brian's ear]
Brian: Aaagh ! The imperative !
Centurion: Which is... ?
Brian: Aaaagh ! Er, er, "i" !
Centurion: How many Romans?
Brian: Aaaaagh ! Plural, plural, er, "ite" !
Centurion: [Writes "ite"] "Domus"? Nominative? "Go home" is motion towards, isn't it?
Brian: Dative !
[the Centurion holds a sword to his throat]
Brian: Aaagh ! Not the dative, not the dative ! Er, er, accusative, "Domum" !
Centurion: But "Domus" takes the locative, which is... ?
Brian: Er, "Domum" !
Centurion: [Writes "Domum"] Understand? Now, write it out a hundred times.
Brian: Yes sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar, sir.
Centurion: Hail Caesar ! And if it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off.

My colleague John Grunsfeld (Congrats!!!)

2011-12-19T19:27:00.000-06:00

Physicist and Former Astronaut John Grunsfeld To Head NASA Science Directorate

WASHINGTON -- NASA has named physicist and former astronaut John Grunsfeld as the new associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington. Grunsfeld will take the reins of the office effective Jan. 4, 2012. He succeeds Ed Weiler, who retired from NASA on Sept. 30.

Grunsfeld currently serves as the deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which manages the science program for the Hubble Space Telescope and is a partner in the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope. His background includes research in high energy astrophysics, cosmic ray physics and in the emerging field of exoplanet studies with specific interest in future astronomical instrumentation.

A veteran of five space shuttle flights, Grunsfeld visited Hubble three times as an astronaut, performing a total of eight spacewalks to service and upgrade the observatory.

"John's understanding of the critical connection between scientific research and the human exploration of space makes him an ideal choice for this job," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "I look forward to working with him to take the agency's science programs to even greater heights and make more of the ground-breaking discoveries about Earth and our universe for which NASA is known."

Grunsfeld graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in physics. Returning to his native Chicago, he earned a master's degree and, in 1988, a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago using a cosmic ray experiment on space shuttle Challenger for his doctoral thesis. From Chicago, he joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology as a Senior Research Fellow in Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy.

Grunsfeld joined NASA's Astronaut Office in 1992. He logged over 58 days in space on five shuttle missions, including 58 hours and 30 minutes of spacewalk time. He first flew to space aboard Endeavour in March 1995 on a mission that studied the far ultraviolet spectra of faint astronomical objects using the Astro Observatory. His second flight was aboard Atlantis in January 1997. The mission docked with the Russian space station Mir and exchanged U.S. astronauts living aboard the outpost. Grunsfeld then flew three shuttle missions - aboard Discovery in December 1999, Columbia in March 2002 and Atlantis in May 2009 -- that successfully serviced and upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope. He served as the payload commander on the 2002 mission and lead spacewalker in charge of Hubble activities on the 2009 flight. In 2004 and 2005, he served as the commander and science officer on the backup crew for Expedition 13 to the International Space Station.

"It is an honor and a privilege to be offered the opportunity to lead NASA's Science Mission Directorate during this exciting time in the agency's history," Grunsfeld said. "Science at NASA is all about exploring the endless frontier of the Earth and space. I look forward to working with the NASA team to help enable new discoveries in our quest to understand our home planet and unravel the mysteries of the universe."

For Grunsfeld's NASA astronaut biography, visit:

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/grunsfel.html

For more information about NASA's Science Mission Directorate, visit:

http://nasascience.nasa.gov

Ice Tunnels

2011-12-18T15:53:00.003-06:00

Deep under the Station grounds, there are the mysterious and sometimes smelly ice tunnels. They're quite cold, being sort of the average year-round temperature down there. About -50 to -60C in fact. Tours are given of the tunnels on occasion. I'm using a mix of photos from last year and this year.

There are escape hatches up to the surface here and there. Only from the surface, seeing these hatches can you figure out how extensive the tunnels are. They reach across a good deal of the station operating area mostly carrying utilities.

Down in the tunnels, there are some shrines carved into the ice. A firefighter shrine.

The famous sturgeon shrine. It's a long story, but the fish came from a Russian team and was traded and ... and no one felt like eating it so it ended up frozen for all time in the tunnel.

It's so cold that bottles of alcohol freeze up as in this shrine.

Around the station...

2011-12-17T21:49:00.002-06:00

Snow machines. A good way of getting around to the ARA stations, drill camp, and out to the IceCube lab.

Power plant. Station runs with about 640kW power generation. Some of the science is electrically hungry. Waste heat from the power plant keeps the station warm.

Storage in one of the (semi-buried) arches.

The IceCube Chariot. Built from leftover bits of the cable reels and pallets. (This photo was from last year. Who knows if the chariot will appear this year...)

Quiet lounge/lending library in the Station.

Antarctica Quotes

2011-12-17T19:07:00.000-06:00

"Great God, this is an aweful place." - Robert Scott

"Great God, this is a waffle place." - McMurdo waffle breakfasts slogan

"We had discovered an accursed country." - Douglas Mawson

"Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has yet been devised." - Aspley Cherry-Garrard

"If there is a hell, this is the place, and the sleeping bags are worse than hell." - Ernest Joyce, member of Shackleton's expedition

"Countries condemned to everlasting rigidity by Nature, never to yield to the warmth of the sun, for whose wild and desolate aspect I find no words; such are the countries we have discovered; what then may those resemble which lie still further to the south? ... To judge the bulk by the sample it would not be worth the discovery ... Should anyone possess the resolution and fortitude to elucidate this point by pushing yet further south than I have done, I shall not envy him the fame of his discovery, but I make bold to declare that the world will derive no benefit from it." - Captain James Cook

"The whole scene looked like the wreck of a shattered world, or as the poets describe some regions of hell; an idea which struck us the more forcibly as execrations, oaths and curses re-echoed about us on all sides." - Forster, member of Cook's crew, 1774

"Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!" - Arthur Gordon Pym, Edgar Allan Poe, & H. P. Lovecraft

Questions (and Answers): Part 2

2011-12-17T18:15:00.000-06:00

7. What do penguins eat? What other animals do you see?

At McMurdo which is close to the ocean, once the ice breaks up, it is on the ocean, there are multiple types of penguins, primarily Adele Penguins, and Wendell Seals. There are also skuas which are sort of like large seagulls. They are extremely good at stealing food from people. If you are carrying open food, they could swing in and grab it. A popular McMurdo joke is to put some bread in someone else's hood. Hilarity ensues.

Penguins eat at sea, not on land. They eat small fish and crustaceans. One of their fish hunting strategies is to dive deep under floating ice and look for fish silhouetted against the ice above them.

At the South Pole, the only animals are people. Bringing any animal onto the continent is a violation of the Antarctic Treaty.

8. What is your tent like? How do you stay warm?

We stay in the South Pole Elevated Station. It's a large complex of labs, a galley, medical facility, private (very small) berths, and the previously mentioned recreation facilities. It's warm indoors, though my work is often located outside. We stay warm with the heavy gear mentioned in a previous answer. With all of the outdoor, cold activity the body can burn (a very accurate term in this case) a lot of food calories. The galley serves up four hearty meals each day. (In addition to the usual meals there's "midrats," midnight rations, for folks working night shift.

Camping out at the South Pole requires heavy gear, or some knowledge of how to use the snow and ice to your advantage as insulation. A class is taught, both at Pole and McMurdo, known to all as "Happy Camper School" in which you learn to use the long distance (HF) radios, start the cooking stoves to melt snow, cut trenches in the snow in which to sleep, and to build snow-block construction shelters.

9. What are neutrinos and why are they important?

Neutrinos are subatomic particles. Basically the universe is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Nuclear reactions are when a neutron turns to a proton or vice versa. In those reactions, scientists noted about 70 years ago that there had to be something else emitted in order for energy and momentum to be conserved (conservation laws are among the most important handles we have on the universe, e.g., no matter what you do, the total amount of energy, charge, and other properties stay the same) there had to be another particle, not seen at the time, coming out of the reaction. That's the neutrino.

Since that time the neutrino has been observed, it reacts very rarely, meaning that detectors need to be large in order to have a good chance of seeing the particle. That makes it hard to do neutrino astronomy, but it also means that neutrinos get to us from anywhere in the universe. Light or other particles only reach us from relatively close by, farther away and the universe turns black, turns opaque, to the particles. But not to neutrinos, so we can look farther, and at higher energies at the whole universe with neutrinos. That's why they're important.

10. How many people are at the South Pole? What do they all do?

It's summertime now, the warmest time of the year, there are between 200 and 250 people at the US South Pole Station. There are flights in and out every few days and the population changes depending on what projects are ongoing. For the Amundsen Centennial, there were almost 100 visitors to the South Pole. There's no other permanent base here. During the winter, about 50 people stay at the South Pole Station. After the last flight in February those 50 people are stuck here until October. Six months of that in the dark! Not something I'd opt to do.

At McMurdo, during the summer there are up to 1100-1200 people there, and in the winter about 200 folks.

There are all sorts of work going on both at Pole and McMurdo, people work on the fuel systems (fuelies), haul, sort and manage cargo, cook the food, clean the dishes ("dining assistants"), drive the vehicles, staff the fire house and medical, do science, keep the heating working, shovel snow, etc. The vast majority of people in the Antarctic Program are in support roles, keeping the science going.

11. What are the differences between Icecube and ARA?

IceCube is fully built, completed last Antarctic Summer, uses the light emitted from neutrino interactions in the very clear, cold ice to observe the neutrinos. The science goals are focused on neutrinos from supernovae, from active galactic nuclei, and cosmic ray anisotropy. ARA is a new project, we're just starting construction, and will take advantage of the radio (rather than optical) emission from neutrino-induced showers (cascades) in the radio-transparent cold ice. The science focus is at higher energies than IceCube and looking at the close connection between very high energy cosmic rays and the neutrinos.

IceCube is an instrumented kilometer-cubed of ice with modules spaced 17m (60ft) apart vertically and strings spaced 125m (400ft) apart. ARA will cover an area of over 100 square kilometers and observe interactions down to the bottom of the 3000m (10,000ft) thick ice sheet.

12. What other projects and experiments are at the Pole?

There is a large microwave band telescope (SPT, South Pole Telescope) here that takes advantage of the lack of water vapor in the atmosphere above the Pole. Other telescopes at the Pole are a couple of different efforts to look at the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB); experiments called SPUD, BICEP, and VIPER. In different fields, there's a clean air lab that looks at some of the most pristine air on earth. (You can visit them and get a little jar of the cleanest air anywhere that you could use as a gift.) There's also a seismic sensor (SPRESSO) a few miles from the station, magnetometers monitoring the Earth's field, neutron monitors looking at charged particles from the Sun and the changing solar cycles, aurora cameras (for the winter dark sky), a meteorological observatory, and ice-coring and meteorite-hunting expeditions out in the field away from Pole.

Questions (and Answers): Part 1

2011-12-16T20:28:00.001-06:00

Here are answers to some of the questions I've received from back in the States. More forthcoming soon...

1. I know there are no polar bears in Antarctica. Why not though?

There are no large, land-based predators in Antarctica at all. I'm not an expert, but believe that it's basically because there are no land-based animals at all. The penguins do nest on shore, but must go into the water to feed, and there there are seals and killer whales (orcas) that fill the top level predator niche that the polar bear fills in northern lands. The Antarctic waters (Southern Ocean) are filled with sea life.

2. What do you wear outside? What did Amundsen wear?

If I'm only going to be outside for a short time, I wear wool socks, hiking boots, pants that are somewhat windproof, shirt, fleece jacket, gloves, sunglasses, and hat. Not too different from what I might wear outside in the winter back in the States. If I'm going to be outside longer, then one starts to think about three layers: an inner layer that allows moisture to escape (important if I'm working hard and sweating), insulation layer, and an outer, windproof, layer. So for a full day working outside, I wear polypropylene sock liners, wool socks, extreme cold weather (ECW) boots, polypropylene underwear, insulated & windproof overalls, fleece jacket, fleece neck gaiter, fleece hat, googles, two layers of gloves, and a big, heavy down coat. And we take little chemical heat packets to put in our gloves and boots if needed.

Amundsen studied what the Inuits, the folks who live in the far northern Arctic regions, wore. He went with reindeer skins as an outer layer, and then multiple woolen inner layers. He had felt boots that were stuffed with straw to absorb moisture. He understood those same three layers from outside to inside: windproof, insulation, and water-repelling.

3. How does your drill work?

We drill by using hot water to melt a column of the Antarctic ice down to the depth we're interested in. We have a large, insulated hot water tank, a snow melter, and a series of six diesel-fired water heaters to heat water. There's a long hose on a hose reel that feeds down the hole as it melts and at the end of the hose there is a set of nozzles that spray the hot water.

4. What do you do for fun at the Pole?

Well, in the station there is a gym with popular volleyball and basketball games. There is also a weight room, exercise room, musical practice room, arts and crafts room, movie room, game room, and some limited outdoor running and skiing. I brought a guitar with me, but I haven't had much time to practice or play with others. Been keeping busy with work. The work week here is six days per week, maybe nine or ten hours per day. At the moment our drillers are working twelve hour days with no days off.

There's an arts and crafts fair tomorrow, also I'm giving a science talk to everyone on the station tomorrow, and maybe people are keeping blogs or photo journals while they're here. Also, there are lots of interesting people to chat with here...

5. What is the military plane like? How did you get in the cockpit?

Loud. Earplugs are required or hearing damage could take place. I take big earmuffs so that I can slide my earphone from my mp3 player in under the earmuffs during the flight. The plane can also be cold, especially the smaller LC-130 (ski-equiped) Hercules planes we fly between McMurdo and the Pole. It's a cargo plane, so a lot of the space is taken up with pallets of cargo. That cargo could be food, vehicles, scientific equipment, or most anything else that is needed on Antarctica. I flew one time on a plane with a helicopter in the back. There are rows of paratrooper jump seats along the walls of the plane, you sit on strapping, and stick your carry-on bag under your seat. Sometimes on the larger C-17 (and the older C-141 and C-5 transport planes) they load pallets with old airline seats on them.

Often the pilots will announce that at some point in the flight, anyone can come up and take a look, but just a couple of people at a time. It used to be that commercial airliners would do that too, especially for children to let them take a look at the cockpit and out the windows. That isn't done any longer due to security concerns. On the military flights it's especially nice because the windows in back are few and pretty small. (See previous post for some photos.)

6. Why do you travel through New Zealand?

The main US base in Antarctica is McMurdo Base on Ross Island and that's more or less straight south of New Zealand. So it makes sense to fly (commercial airlines) down to Christchurch on the southern island of New Zealand, and then take the military flights south. All of the cargo and people (who often feel like they're treated as cargo also) for the US Antarctic Program travels that way for McMurdo and South Pole. There's also a US station called Palmer Base which is on the opposite side of the continent and there the logistics are done through Chile instead.

South Pole Station runs on New Zealand time while Palmer, and the tourists down here, run on Chilean time since that's where they came from back in the "civilized" world. At the South Pole, it doesn't matter much which time zone you pick, just need to be consistent.

In the cockpit

2011-12-16T17:48:00.004-06:00

This is in the cockpit of the C-17 (Globemaster) enroute from Christchurch to McMurdo. They let the passengers up to the cockpit one or two folks at a time. The US Air Force flight crews don't have to follow civil aviation rules, and are quite friendly in general.

The cockpit is a mix of modern, glass instrumentation and big olive drab levers and buttons.

View out of the side of the cockpit window, broken sea ice on the approach to McMurdo. This was probably 30-40 minutes, maybe 200-300 miles, out of arrival.

The overhead panels was a solid wall of olive drab and black buttons and indicators.

Open water channel quite a ways from McMurdo still.

New drill photos

2011-12-15T22:24:00.001-06:00

The varied fortunes of drilling

2011-12-15T21:12:00.002-06:00

Hot water drilling in Antarctica is a tricky business. First, let's start with the obvious, we need to use a liquid that will freeze immediately if exposed to the environment. If the heaters stop, the plumbing freezes and breaks. If you need to walk away from the drill, it needs to have the water all pumped out and replaced with glycol. Glycol is our antifreeze friend in the drill, but not to be spilled and violate the Antarctic Treaty.

This past week has been a roller coaster ride following the drill progress. First things were moving slowly, the heaters weren't behaving themselves, sensors were clogging, and pumps were stalling. Then things began to look up, full speed ahead for drilling a 200m (660ft) full hole like we need for the science instrumentation. Right near 200m on Wednesday, a large leak took place on the hose reel, as that was being dealt with, the drill head froze into the hole and could not be extracted even with silly huge applications of force. The hose was finally cut and the drill head left in the ice for possible extraction at a future date.

Thursday morning and the drill was repaired, and a new drill head installed. In the afternoon the drilling gentlemen went down to 70m (230ft), decided that was deep enough for a long day, and then pumped the hole dry. In the course of pumping they discovered that the pump control console needed to be completely rewired. So it was, and the pumping continued.

Friday morning the drill, all mounted on a series of sleds, was pulled away from the test area and delivered to the ARA1 site where the actual drilling is to be done. When I was last there (updates tomorrow) they were at 110m (360ft) heading downwards at 2/3 m/minute (2ft per minute) with a plan to pump it dry later in the day. The drillers are in 24 hour operation, so that means 12 hours on, outside working hard at -32C (-25F, easy to remember -40C = -40F), on their feet, with some food delivered in the middle of the day. Then the next shift takes over.

Amundsen Bust

2011-12-15T14:59:00.002-06:00

Yep, it looks like him.

Biggest crowd ever at the South Pole

2011-12-14T23:01:00.003-06:00

Speech by Norwegian Prime Minister Stoltenberg at the Centennial, South Pole, 14 December 2011

2011-12-14T22:28:00.003-06:00

Crowds of people at the Ceremonial Pole, the Norwegian Prime Minister, and the covered-up (ice) head of Amundsen.

Me, after the ceremony, posing with Mr. Amundsen's ice head.

Dear friends,

Congratulations!

Exactly one hundred years ago, on the 14th of December 1911, five brave Norwegians led by Roald Amundsen were the first people to reach the South Pole.

We are here today to honour these five men. We are here to celebrate one of the most outstanding achievements of mankind. And we are here to highlight the importance of this cold continent for the warming of the globe.

14th of December 1911 was a proud day for Norway. A young nation that had gained its full independence only six years earlier. The polar expeditions of Roald Amundsen helped to form our new national identity. And the qualities that enabled Amundsen, Hassel, Bjaaland, Hansen and Wisting to reach the South Pole, were precisely those that the young nation wanted to be recognised by: Courage, determination and endurance, and readiness to meet new challenges.

Today is also the time to pay tribute to the bravery of Robert Scott and his men. Scott and his team paid the ultimate prize. But their names will forever be inscribed in Polar history. They will always be remembered for their courage and determination in reaching one of the most unhospitable places on earth.

When Amundsen reached the Pole the team put up its tent, and they named the camp “Polheim” – Home at the Pole. Today the South Pole is “home” for many of you who are celebrating with us today. More than 200 people have their daily work here at the Amundsen-Scott Base during the summer season. I would like to thank you and the US National Science Foundation for receiving us here with such warm hospitality in a frozen environment.

Some of you have experienced the hardship of skiing to the Pole. You have seen the beauty and the fascination of the Antarctic wilderness. And you have learned how challenging and unpredictable this frozen continent can be.

Today, Antarctica is a continent of international cooperation, regulated by a well-functioning Antarctic Treaty, where peace and stability, environmental protection and international scientific research, are at the heart of our joint efforts. Researchers from all over the world are trying to discover the secrets of this vast continent. The Norwegian Troll Station is at the forefront of Norwegian research in Antarctica. Norway and the United States have a long history of scientific cooperation. The US – Norwegian Antarctic Scientific Traverse in 2007 made important findings. The Antarctic continent has been changing more rapidly in recent years than at any time in the past 800 years.

Some of the most rapid and large-scale impacts of climate change are first being seen in the polar regions. The loss of ice in Antarctica can have dramatic global effects. It is our common responsibility to save this planet for future generations.

Roald Amundsen, Robert Scott and their men were prepared to make an extraordinary effort in order to reach their ambitious goals. We need to be prepared to do the same. That is the best way to honour a century of science and exploration at the South Pole.

Thank you.

To mark the historic achievements a hundred years ago, it is now my privilege to unveil this bust of Roald Amundsen here at the South Pole, made by the Norwegian artist Håkon Anton Fagerås.

Busy Amundsen Day at the South Pole

2011-12-13T18:15:00.002-06:00

Skiers are coming in, and there are 93 tourists staying out at the tent camps north and south of the station. Later today, at 4PM local time, there will be the unveiling of an ice Amundsen bust and some words by the Norwegian Prime Minister (who toured the science experiments at Pole yesterday on skis). After dinner I've been invited to a reception for the PM.

The actual anniversary is at 4AM tomorrow morning. Not sure what will happen then, but I do plan to check it out. Only happens every 100 years...

Right now I have to get on my warm layers (my ECW, extreme cold weather, gear) and go out and supervise some trenching for the ARA experiment. Hope to make it back for the ceremony!

Some drill photos for your amusement

2011-12-11T19:48:00.005-06:00

Drill hose in the foreground, heaters in the middle, and the insulated water storage tank in the background.
Diesel heaters being worked on. Air temperature is -30C or so.
Water tank plumbing. Think about how to keep water plumbing from freezing at these temperatures. Warm glycol or warm water only to keep it from freezing.
The heaters with their exhaust stacks.
Heater firing up, smoke and flames everywhere.

Friends and colleagues in Antarctica

2011-12-11T14:22:00.003-06:00

A number of my friends and colleagues are also in Antarctica, both McMurdo and South Pole, and have interesting blogs to follow as well.

In McMurdo, working at the Long Duration Balloon facility (though judging from the blog entries, perhaps not working so hard...) is my old ballooning colleague Scott Nutter and his blog Astroparticle Physics in Antarctica. There's a lot of good information in there about recreation and around McMurdo Station. Good pictures too! Though let's not tell him that he hasn't actually been to Antarctica since Ross Island (where McMurdo is located) is off to sea from the actual continent of Antarctica. Okay, it depends on your definitions I suppose!

Although he left this season before I got here, John Jacobsen has an excellent website for his work and art, along with a blog of his South Pole trips from 2006 through 2011. Great photos and a number of posts that I wish I had made. :) Last year we overlapped a bit at the South Pole and then again in transit headed north through McMurdo.

Here at Pole right now is Laurel Bacque, the IceCube press liaison and general PR person (which I mean in a good way!) who keeps a blog called Chica en Uruguay (though obviously the Chica is en South Pole right now). Check out the excellent "South Pole Myths" and "How to use the women's restroom on an LC-130" in particular.

There's also some of the skiers headed to Pole posting on the Adventure Blog. Hope to see these folks soon.

For a different, darker and colder Antarctica, check out the Winter-Over blogs of Freija and Christine from this past winter season. More links can be found at the unofficial South Pole Station website.

Questions for South Pole?

2011-12-07T21:32:00.002-06:00

Feel free to collect any and all questions, have received some from some students following my blog from Madison, and send them along to me. Will write up one long response to the sets of questions. Thanks and cheers, Mike

michael.duvernois.guest AT usap.gov goes directly to my South Pole address.

Fuel delivery from the traverse

2011-12-06T13:57:00.003-06:00

The traverse delivers fuel in these black bladders (they stay warmer and more flexible in the sun than the older off-white bladders). The sleds are made from UHMWPE (ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene, think big plastic kitchen cutting boards).

And a steel hitch/spreader bar setup.

That is bolted to the plastic.

These are still awaiting offload into the station fuel supply. Other sleds and bladders were left along the path to fuel the return trip to McMurdo.

In flight from McMurdo to South Pole

2011-12-05T21:25:00.004-06:00

Passengers in the paratrooper jump seats.

Our cargo, stowed on the rear ramp of the plane.

Stunning views (albeit through small windows) of the Trans-Antarctic Mountains.

Some spots not covered completely with snow and ice.

And something familiar, cargo that I packed months ago, enroute south with me.

A slight rewind...the flight from McMurdo to the South Pole

2011-12-05T21:10:00.003-06:00

Out of McMurdo we fly south in an LC-130 (Hercules transport plane equipped with skis to land at the Pole). They're operated by the New York Air National Guard, and are a rather friendly and laid back group (compared to the Air Force folks flying the C-17s).

We boarded the plane, took off, and almost immediately turned around and landed again. There was a failure in the bleed air system which takes engine air and ducts it into the plane for, among other things, a deicing system on the leading edges of the wing. It was that part of the system which had failed.

There were DVs (Distinguished Visitors) on the flight though, so the ground crews scrambled, offloaded all of the cargo, and we got another plane. The DVs were taken back to town for food, but the rest of us were dumped on the runway to wait for ninety minutes or so for the new plane to be ready. These DVs made up a Presidential Blue Ribbon panel looking at US facilities in Antarctica.

South Pole Traverse

2011-12-05T20:43:00.003-06:00

The South Pole Traverse (SPOT) came in over the weekend. They drive large tractors up from McMurdo to the South Pole Station taking about 30 days to get here. They pull their own sleeping and eating accommodations and a large supply of fuel for the station. (South Pole requires vast amounts of fuel for heating, vehicles, and electricity. Most of it is delivered at staggering expense by air, by the New York Air National Guard LC-130s that also bring the passengers and the cargo to Pole. The traverse is a much more economical way of delivering the fuel.)

One thing is different from the others...

2011-12-05T19:46:00.001-06:00

These are a row of safety equipment (mostly breathing gear) in the South Pole Station.

Well...I'm at the South Pole and getting settled in

2011-12-04T16:46:00.002-06:00

Will get some additional photos and text up soon, but for the moment rest assured that it's colder here than where you are.

McMurdo arrival

2011-11-30T20:13:00.003-06:00

So, you've flown from home all the way to Christchurch on the south island of New Zealand, felt saddened by the earthquake damage, been issued your ECW (EXTREME Cold Weather) clothing, and flown on a load, crowded military transport for hours. Now what?

Well, you hop off the plane into the brilliant sunlight (sunshine plus reflected sunlight off of all of that ice), feel some wind and surprisingly warm air (it is Antarctica, but it's summer, you're on the coast, and it's probably around 20-25F). What's next?

A slog of bureaucracy. Load up and go to the NSF Chalet HQ and hear about safety, recycling, rules, regulations, changes in the rules, and then you explain what you want to do when you leave Antarctica (for the travel office) and then you get a room key. Drop your stuff off in the room, go to the laundry facility and get some sheets, drop off the sheets, find some food. Then your bags arrive on the base and you go haul those off to your room.

And for those of us heading on to Pole, we turn our bags back over to the cargo folks, get ourselves weighed again, and prepare for another flight. Hopefully the next morning.

From the C-17 cockpit

2011-11-30T19:25:00.002-06:00

As a nice treat, we got to go up into the cockpit of the C-17 enroute down to the ice.

Went up there once in the middle of the flight and then again later as we were crossing the ice sheet (see previous entry for some photos).

Aerial images of the approach to McMurdo

2011-11-30T16:43:00.002-06:00

Military cargo aircraft tend not to have very good windows for folks in back... Got a few pictures out of the small windows.

The sea ice breaking up as we get closer to McMurdo and Ross Island. (So, the Antarctic ice sheet sits on top of land, and in a few places there is exposed land, one of those places is Ross Island home of McMurdo.)
Open water channel. Not sure on the map where we were exactly. These last couple of shots were taken from the cockpit.

Post-quake Christchurch (The somewhat good)

2011-11-30T16:19:00.003-06:00

One good sign was the number of cranes in the central business district, work is going on. Buildings being demolished, and hopefully others repaired, restored, and rebuilt.

On the weekends, you can follow the safety instructions and take a walking path (down the middle of the street past broken buildings) into the Cathedral Square. Was in Christchurch during the middle of the week, so that wasn't an option for me. But good to see some access to the city despite legalish and safety issues.

It wasn't exactly hopping, but there is a new "mall" build up of ISO standard shipping containers (which I happen to, as a true geek, like a lot). It looks pretty good, kind of edgy and surprisingly effective for small, specialty shops. I could picture a shopping mall of containers working in a US city as well. These were built in an older established shopping district whose previous buildings were destroyed by the quake.

No trams running any longer. The red containers in the middle (with windows) are a coffee shop.

And the World Buskers Festival will be back in 2012. I'll probably be back through Christchurch next year and hope to see big improvements.

Post-quake Christchurch (The BAD)

2011-11-30T15:54:00.002-06:00

Each year when I go to Antarctica, I spend time in Christchurch, New Zealand for a few days before and after Antarctica. It's a green place, warm in the middle of the Southern Hemisphere summer, and quite friendly. There are good restaurants, and if you've forgotten something from up North, you can find it in New Zealand.

Last year in December and January when I was there, the city was recovering from the September 2010 7.1 magnitude quake. The city was recovering rather well I thought, you can look back to last year's entries and see some damage in photos, but most things were in good shape. Well, not long afterward there was the February 2011 6.3 magnitude quake which caused significantly more damage, and many deaths. 10,000 homes to be demolished. Most of the larger buildings downtown need to be brought down as well.

So, I spent a couple of nights in Christchurch on my way south to Pole, and took a look around...

There are a lot of commercial buildings that look like this now. Standing, but with broken windows and emptied offices. Some are being demolished, others are just fenced off. Probably to be demolished later. The businesses are gone, elsewhere or nowhere.

One can just see the Christchurch Cathedral in the distance, but one can't go any closer. The whole central business district is fenced off, maybe a radius of 4 blocks or so centered on Cathedral Square. I circumnavigated the fencing, seeing lots of abandoned and badly damaged residential and commercial buildings inside and outside the fence line. There were also a number of empty lots of previously demolished buildings. And this is now nine months later!

A church at the periphery of downtown, the roof is collapsed and there are workers who are appearing to try to preserve the bell tower section of the church.

I looked through the window of a coffee shop, and there was still a copy of the 22 February 2011 newspaper sitting on the counter. The building abandoned, it didn't appear too badly damaged, but it was right on the edge of a very dead commercial zone.

Active demolition work and abandoned piles of debris on many street corners.

It was very sad to see the city in this condition. None of the downtown hotels I had previously stayed at were functioning, all were within the exclusion zone. None of the businesses (mostly restaurants, coffee shops, and tourist gift shops) that I knew were extant. Many were inside the fence, some outside the fence had simply vanished, others were closed but some signs were still present.

There was various mentions of blame for the failure of reconstruction on insurance companies unwilling to insure buildings and, in some cases, workers in buildings in Christchurch, and also on safety rules that might be reasonable in ordinary conditions, but that were a huge problem in emergency conditions. Hard for me to tell much about this from a quick visit.

Expeditions to Pole for this 100th anniversary season

2011-11-19T20:40:00.006-06:00

For the 100th anniversary of the Amundsen and Scott expedition race to the South Pole.

Also found this specific to Norwegian commemorations of the 100th anniversary.

Here's some notes from an NSF person pulling together items for the anniversary.

There's a British Army effort in honor of Scott's failed expedition.

And a Norwegian Expedition currently enroute towards the Pole.

Our new IceCube winterovers (11's)

2011-11-17T16:19:00.004-06:00

My old colleague Scott Nutter

2011-11-15T23:23:00.001-06:00

He's in McMurdo (which isn't quite the bottom of the world, but you can fly nonstop to there) working on the CREST experiment and has a rather nice blog of life in McMurdo. Do check it out!

Preparations around the IceCube Lab (ICL)

2011-11-15T14:38:00.005-06:00

ARA drill systems showing up around the ICL.

Loading ramp up to the ICL. Nice and clear day...

Photos are from just a couple of days ago. (Outhouse and waste line coming soon.)

Last bits on the HAWC review

2011-11-12T14:29:00.001-06:00

Am back from the site and from the Puebla Review of the HAWC experiment. There is some online information showing the schedule and documentation details of the review here at this location. The Photo Gallery is especially good.

Science and technical reviews

2011-11-08T09:48:00.003-06:00

So, this is probably going to be a dull entry, but I wanted to detail what sort of event I'm attending this week down in Puebla. This is a review called by the funding agencies to assess the progress of the experiment and verify that the money is being spent well.

To do that, there are management folks from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy (the main US funders of the project), some science reviewers from similar (or not especially similar) projects acting as peer reviewers, and folks from the Mexican funding agencies (which have a complicated setup that I don't fully understand) here to listen to talks from all different pieces of the experiment and ask questions.

Physicists are generally, let's go ahead and stereotype a little bit, pretty critical, and willing to push on questions for which they are unable with the answers. So a Q&A with a panel of physicists can be a loud, even brutal business. Obviously the management folks are much more reserved in such questioning. So talks have to be vetted ahead of time and delivered with some care.

So far the review has been going well, the project is in relatively good shape. Some things, especially for the site construction work, have been moving slowly, but delays are of a few months, nothing too horrible. The project now has about 135 people in the US and Mexico, and the total budget for the project will be on the order of $15M.

Last year and this coming year IceCube Winterovers

2011-11-08T09:04:00.001-06:00

HAWC Observatory

2011-11-07T18:54:00.001-06:00

You can get more information from the new website.

A few nature photos from my last visit to the HAWC site

2011-11-06T13:52:00.002-06:00

Minor detour from the South Pole

2011-11-06T13:37:00.003-06:00

This week I'm headed to Puebla, Mexico for the joint NSF-DoE (National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, the two main US funding sources for science that isn't related to your congressman's liver (that would be the National Institutes of Health, funding whatever the congressfolks are scared of medically)) review of the HAWC experiment. This is a science and management review to make sure that we're spending the taxpayer money well, and that the project is progressing reasonably.

HAWC is the High Altitude Water Cherenkov experiment. That means it's being built at high altitude, 4100 meters or about 14000 feet above sea level, in order to get higher up into the cascade (or shower) of energetic particles produced when cosmic rays or gamma rays hit the top of the atmosphere. The detector technology is Water Cherenkov, that is, we observe the light emitted from fast-moving particles traversing through a water tank. The light is detected with photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) capable of seeing single photons with nanosecond (billionth of a second) resolution. It's the gamma rays at energies at the top of the atmosphere of near 1 TeV (10^12 electron volts) that are of particular interest.

One of the main goals of HAWC is to observe the whole sky (rather than like an optical telescope, just the small patch of the sky one is aimed at) in these TeV gamma rays (which are super-high energy photons) for transient sources. The main goal is to observe gamma ray bursts (GRBs, very energetic astronomical explosions much of the way across the universe) at higher energies than previously seen. This would enable us to better understand the physics of the GRB sources and the propagation (travel) of the photons from those sources to the Earth.

To one specific high altitude valley in Mexico to be precise. It's a beautiful site, so look for photos in the next couple of days...

First LC-130s at Pole

2011-11-03T10:41:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Freija for the photos (from the weekly Winter-Over report). The LC-130s are ski-equiped US military transport planes operated by the New York Air National Guard (NYANG, with various pronunciations of the acronym).

First arrivals at South Pole

2011-11-02T17:01:00.003-05:00

The two IceCube Winter-Overs are enroute from McMurdo down to the South Pole today. They'll gradually take over, during the next two or so weeks, from the previous Winter-Overs. The two of them will run the IceCube instrumentation at Pole during the next twelve months with oversight from the Northern Hemisphere. But when a fan is blocked, and the over-temperature alarm sounds for a computer (odd thinking about overheating at the South Pole!) and a beeper goes off, it's one of the Winter-Overs who slogs the mile from the South Pole Station over to the IceCube Laboratory regardless of the time of day or the weather.

Some of our other colleagues are also heading that direction, and some of my ballooning colleagues are in McMurdo already getting ready to prepare the CREST instrument for flight. (CREST is a novel attack on the problem of understanding the TeV electrons in the cosmic radiation, see the talk here for (technical) details.)

The first flights in and out of Pole are on Baslers (see photo above, modified DC-3s, airframes over 50 years old!). More on those planes some other time...

Quantum diaries

2011-10-26T17:26:00.002-05:00

I'm joining up with the Quantum Diaries particle physics blog in the next week or so. Will see how to balance my blogging from the southlands...

Cards from Pole

2011-10-26T17:25:00.002-05:00

If you want a postcard or envelope from the South Pole (definitely with some South Pole postmark, and possibly with a cool South Pole postmark), let me know...

General ARA talk

2011-10-20T14:49:00.002-05:00

So I gave a talk on ARA for the folks here at the IceCube Research Center (soon to be the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center) at lunchtime. This was a talk intended for a mix of physics folks and the financial folks and the secretaries and all. Not sure if it was completely success for a general audience, but feel free to take a look at the talk. Comments always welcomed.

My experiment at South Pole this year

2011-10-18T17:53:00.003-05:00

Will be mostly working on ARA, the Askaryan Radio Array, which has only the saddest, slimmest web page at the moment. The writeup at Wikipedia is actually better, though hardly comprehensive.

If you can handle the science lingo, then your best bet is our paper on the Arxiv e-print server. That covers last year's TestBed installation and also the proposed, and perhaps soon-to-be-funded, full 37 station version of the experiment.

There are also some unannotated photos from last year's Pole season. Plus look back at my postings from last season.

C-17 Winter airdrop at South Pole

2011-10-18T17:29:00.001-05:00

This was medical supplies for the Winter Station Manager who had a stroke back in August.

South Pole packing list

2011-10-18T12:20:00.004-05:00

Well, for McMurdo Base on the coast, all you need are sneakers and regular clothes. Warm boots if you get cold feet easily, and the staff at the CDC (Clothing Distribution Center, not Centers for Disease Control) in Christchurch, New Zealand will get you outfitted with the rest. It's warmer there in McMurdo than back in the upper Midwest of the US in November through February.

But for Pole, it's genuinely cold there, and a lot of the work is outside. So you need to bring some good sock liners (polypropylene, or SmartWool, or silk, try REI or the like) to wear under big wool socks (these are issued, but you're better off with your own good wool socks, I like these Swedish army wool surplus socks I got a few years ago, big, thick, and comfortable). You also need slippers or flip flops for around the station and to the sauna and the like. Good thermal underwear is nice as what is issued doesn't fit me very well. Polypropylene or silk work well again for this inner layer. SmartWool if you can afford it. Outer layers are pretty good as issued, but a pair of your own warm boots is useful. Sorrels work fine. I have a pair of Columbia -40F (-40F and -40C are the same, which is nice and convenient) boots that are plenty warm enough most of the time.

One of my colleagues made an impression by wearing a tuxedo for the New Year's party. Suit and tie or nice dress are not out of place for Christmas or Thanksgiving dinners. And you'll want a hat that people can recognize from a distance outside.

Resuming for the 2011-2012 South Pole campaign

2011-10-17T20:42:00.002-05:00

I'm headed back to Antarctica for the ARA (Askaryan Radio Array) project in November. I'll be down at the Pole for the 100th anniversary of Amundsen's arrival at the Pole. So my blog should have lots of history as well as the "what I'm up to at the bottom of the world" sort of things. Stay tuned!

That's probably about it for the Antarctic blog for this year

2011-02-08T15:37:00.002-06:00

I haven't posted anything for a bit, and I've shown most of my pictures here, so I think I'll close this up for the season. It seems likely that I'll be back down to the South Pole next austral summer for the next phase of the ARA construction, so I'll resume Antarctica postings then.

Cheers,
Mike

Antarctic hero shots

2011-01-30T13:58:00.003-06:00

So, hero shots are those pictures of yourself in fabulous locations, doing great deeds, and are inevitably posed pictures. So here I am in Antarctica, being a hero...

In McMurdo, on a previous ANITA balloon campaign, with the ANITA solar array.

At the South Pole, in drill camp with a number of large wrenches (none of which I used for anything other than photo props). Good clue as to the posed nature of the picture is the fact that my clothes are clean and there are no icicles hanging from my face.

With the Pisten Bully (name comes from the German term "piste" as in "off-piste skiing" and not piston from the engine) in front of the IceCube Lab.

At the Geographic South Pole, a location which is resurveyed each year as the ice moves over the bedrock (far) below. (Thanks to Peter Gorham for the photos.)

Arms around the Earth. At the Ceremonial South Pole, where the flags and barbershop pole reside. South Pole Elevated Station is in the background.

Ooops!

2011-01-28T23:20:00.001-06:00

I didn't take the picture. This is at McMurdo. I think the fire extinguisher didn't quite work...

Some oddities at the South Pole

2011-01-28T23:18:00.002-06:00

Sousaphone in the hallway.

The lobster isn't native to the Pole region. The bread might be.

Perry looks quite dapper in his tux, but there are no penguins at the South Pole.

A marathon at the South Pole? Yep.

LC-130 ski-equipped Hercules

2011-01-28T23:13:00.002-06:00

Takeoff!

Not sure if it's a pretty aircraft...but it is loud.

That's the view out the window, though you can go closer and get some good shots. Posted some earlier.

The passenger area on a flight from MCM to NPX, looking forward. The green hanging curtain is the bathroom.

Pax deplaning at Pole.

Basler

2011-01-28T22:59:00.002-06:00

One of my favorite Antarctic planes is the Basler. This is an old DC-3 (or military version, C-47) of World War 2 vintage that has been stretched (especially in the cargo door area) and re-engined with turboprops (okay, and they do a lot more as well to the plane). Basler Conversions is in Oshkosh, WI and I'd like to go and visit sometime. Webpage for Basler.

Yes, manufactured originally in 1942. Still flying today in the world's harshest environments. Part of the key to their longevity is the lack of pressurization. Pressurizing the passenger/cargo area produces stresses on the airframe.

Big doors to load lots of equipment.

Kenn Borek Air is a northern Canadian operation that moves to Antarctica when the ice roads up north start carrying the heavy cargo. Note the skis.

Fuel depot.

Still more Oden pictures

2011-01-28T22:31:00.002-06:00

Linda, the 1st (2nd?) officer, who graciously gave us the tour. On the bridge, near the captain's chair.

A sample of the hull material. Thick. Heavy.

Looking out the back of the bridge area onto the helicopter pad.

Yep, there's a theater. Comfy seats too.

They had hats, t-shirts, fleeces, Swedish candy and chips, and postcards.

You wanted penguin pictures...

2011-01-28T22:26:00.002-06:00

Discussions have mostly been on Facebook

2011-01-28T15:03:00.003-06:00

For example, on the McMurdo runways: Link

If you're looking at this on Blogger or Blogspot, do feel free to friend me on Facebook. If I don't know you, put in a "antarctica blog" mention in the message. Thanks!

More on the Oden

2011-01-27T11:24:00.003-06:00

Top view of the lifeboat.

Looking out over the bow deck. The containers on board have the science experiments that were conducted during the cruise inside of them. Breaking ice, the Oden can spray water from the bow to "lubricate" the ice breaking process.

The broken-up ice where the ship entered port.

HUGE, wide bridge with a conference table in the background. Excellent all-around views.

The interior of the ship was quite nice, lots of woodwork. This is a shot in the door of the library.

The icebreaker Oden

2011-01-27T11:15:00.003-06:00

The US Antarctic Program contracts with the Swedish Polar Programs to have an icebreaker clear the McMurdo Sound and bring the tanker and cargo ship into port. (The dock is a floating mass of layers of ice and dirt, the near one is the current floating dock and the farther one is a ten year old dock.) The Swedish icebreaker Oden has been doing this duty for a number of years. Previously I had seen it out in the Sound, but this year (thanks to Mark Krasberg!) we got a tour of the ship.

It's a big, blocky ship, about 350 feet long and probably a good 120 feet or so wide. Quite pretty in a serious way. It's also beautifully kept up with nary a spot of rust, even after a hundred day cruise down from Scandinavia to the Southern Ocean.

Lifeboat and wing of bridge.

Our informal tour group on the gun turret mounting. The Oden was originally built for the Swedish military.

More Oden info can be found at Wikipedia and some pictures from a 2007 cruise on Wired.

IceCube flags

2011-01-26T17:59:00.002-06:00

The IceCube project installed a very nice set of flags over the IceCube strings to help folks visualize the experiment in celebration of the completion of construction. Orange flags for regular IceCube strings of detectors, and red ones for the denser "deep core" strings. Here you seen one string in the foreground (with some small flags on bamboo poles which are used widely in Antarctica to flag almost anything, black flags mean "stay out" and the others are interchangeable (at least at Pole, McMurdo has some rules for their use)) and two heading away in line into the background.

IceCube hole marker, with the IceCube laboratory in the background. Note the outhouse to the left of the picture. I'll leave that to your imagination as to proper function in the cold. (There's no running water in the IceCube Lab (ICL).)

The South Pole Traverse

2011-01-26T17:33:00.002-06:00

While I was Pole, just before Christmas, the South Pole Traverse came in from McMurdo. They had left 38 days earlier (though they had returned to MCM with some mechanical issues and been snowed in for a time too, so it didn't take quite that long to drive to Pole) and driven along a packed snow "highway" to the Pole. The idea is to reduce the number of airplane flights of cargo (especially fuel) down to the Pole with cheaper transport methods.

The Traverse consists of a bunch of Cat and Case tractors pulling sleds made just from sheets of plastic on which the fuel bladders and other cargo sit. Must be a slow way up to the plateau! The return trip to McMurdo is quicker.

There was a good article in the Guardian, a few years back now, with the warnings about the Pole getting to be easier, and with fears of mass tourism. More and more tourists each year, but none coming by the route of the Traverse.

NPX?

2011-01-26T15:01:00.002-06:00

The airport code for the skiway at the South Pole is NPX which seems somewhat odd for the South Pole Station. (All airfields have such codes, many of them are obvious, SFO for San FranciscO, but some less so, ORD for Chicago O'Hare? Well, it was originally Orchard Field which was renamed for the WW2 fighter ace O'Hare, so it kept its old shorthand form.) Well, originally the South Pole Station was run by the Navy, and they named their airfields (well, the airfield shorthands) to all start with N for Navy. So, that's the Navy Pole Station (X). There's no airfield at the North Pole, so all is right in the world, right?

The sweet, but very delayed, ride off of the ice

2011-01-26T14:41:00.003-06:00

There's our C-17, newly arrived from CHC, on the "tarmac" at Pegasus Airfield in McMurdo. Well, 14 miles out of McMurdo proper. They had delayed the flight multiple days due to bad weather in McTown. That weather included a day when it was 40 degrees F warmer than in Minneapolis... Finally, when the DVs (distinguished visitors, from the National Research Council) were due to leave, the weather got cloudier and colder, but the flight did come in.

Passengers waiting outside at the "terminal" and our bags on the pallet on the right.

DV bags down in front. They'll be hand loaded so that the DVs don't have as much time standing around waiting for bags in CHC.

Back in the USA

2011-01-24T23:12:00.000-06:00

Will keep posting photos and articles from Antarctica as I am far behind on those...

And there's 24/7 phone and internet here...

2011-01-19T20:43:00.002-06:00

It's a luxury on this harsh continent. It lets me get the following quotes right:

"Great god, this is an awful place." - Scott, referring to the South Pole

"The land looks like a fairytale." - Amundsen, regarding Antarctica

"We took risks. We knew we took them. Things have come out against us. We have no cause for complaint." - Scott, found in his diary after he starved to death

"Adventure is just bad planning." - Amundsen, who didn't starve to death

"Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time than an Emperor penguin." - Apsley Cherry-Garrard, from his wonderful book The Worst Journey in the World

"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success." - apocryphal Shackleton, advertising for the Nimrod expedition

Some machinery of the Pole

2011-01-19T19:48:00.002-06:00

One of my colleagues down on the ice is making a picture book of all of the heavy machinery for her three year old nephew. There is some mighty fun heavy metal driving around the Pole. At times it looks like some combination advertisement for Caterpillar tractors and for Carhartt overalls. I think the insulated Carhartts are the iconic Antarctic clothing item now, even more so than the big red (Canada Goose) parka. Anyway...digressions aside, let's take a five image look at some equipment (more soon)...

Some of the smaller Cats at rest.

The hose reel from the RAM drill, mounted on an aircraft pallet so that it can make it through the door of a Herc.

One of the South Pole's two Mantis cranes. Near the cargo lines.

Tracks in the snow, left by one of my favorite machines...

...the Pisten Bully (from the German word Piste, nothing to do with pistons). Am probably biased since I got to drive it around a whole lot and didn't drive the Cats...

In McTown

2011-01-19T18:20:00.002-06:00

Stuck here in McMurdo for a day or so, due to "bad weather" that kept the flight from landing. Well, they didn't even take off or anything. Looked beautiful to me, broken clouds at a few thousand feet, could see the horizon all the way around.

Right now am sitting in the science building at McMurdo (Crary Lab). They have some touchable aquatic animal displays. Will check them out and post pictures if there are good critters to see.

Last full day at the South Pole

2011-01-17T17:00:00.002-06:00

Am doing laundry (we're allowed one load per week, cold only), took a shower (twice per week, two minutes per shower, warm water allowed), am cleaning my room, packing my stuff, and seeing if there's any last minute work to be done. This evening I'll leave my checked bags by the entrance of the station and they'll get taken and palletized. I'll have my ECW gear to wear on the flight (that's required in case of emergency) and a carry-on bag. If the flight is delayed (even for days) all I'll have is my carry-on bag, so it needs to be well stocked but reasonably light. Tomorrow then I should land in McMurdo, and then the following day in Christchurch. If the flights go as planned I'll get two nights rest in Christchurch and then fly to Auckland, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis in close order.

Will keep posting South Pole stories and photos as I head north. Have quite a backlog of them...

Pole Olympics

2011-01-15T17:41:00.002-06:00

More scheduled sport activities...

9 AM: Triathlon: (don’t miss your opportunity to make history by participating in the first ever South Pole Triathlon!!!). Distance: 1 mile bike + 1 mile run + 1 mile ski. Meet at the Pax terminal. Bicycle is provided. You must pick up your own skis ahead of the race. There will be a man and a woman category.

10 AM: Bubble wrap sumo challenge: Meet in the gym. Please bring your own bubble wrap and be bubble wrapped and ready by 10 AM. Come early to prepare your attire. We will draw a ring on the floor. You win the match by pushing your contender outside the ring. If you touch the other person with any body parts not covered by bubble wrap you lose the match. Time limit is 30 sec per match.

11 AM: Beer can race: Meet at the top of the beer can. We will walk down the stairs all together, then race back up one at a time. There will be a man and a woman category.

1:30 PM: The last one pulling: Meet at the Geographic SP. You will have 30 seconds to pull a sled 25 yds. Then we will load the sled with ~50 lbs and you will have 30 sec to pull the sled another 25 yds. Then we will load the sled with another ~50 lbs, etc. The last one pulling will be the winner. There will be a man and a woman category.

2:00 PM: The last one pedaling: (this event was invented on Dec 31 by the Austrian/German teams who visited us). Meet at the Geographic SP. Start pedaling on a groomed surface. Then enter the sastrugi. The winner is the one who can pedal the farthest on the sastrugi.

2:30 PM: Dartathlon: Meet at the Geographic SP. Ski from the Geographic pole to ARO and back, then shoot darts. The dart score is converted to an equivalent time. You must pick up your own skis ahead of the race. The sum of the ski time and dart score will determine the winner.

3:00 PM: Pole-to-pole pull: Meet at the geographic SP. Find a partner and pull them on a sled from the Geographical pole to the Ceremonial pole. Then switch partners and come back to the Geographical pole. The fastest time wins.

3:30 PM: Stick on nose: Meet at the Geographic South Pole. This is a team event: 3 people per team. The first person on the team runs 25 yards to a stick in the snow, puts his/her nose on the stick, goes around it 12 times, and runs back to the team. Then the second person does the same, etc. The fastest time wins. All teams compete simultaneously.

4:00 PM: Fastest in ECW: Meet in the galley. Starting with your top and bottom longjohn and thin socks you will dress in full ECW (heavy socks, boot liners, fdx boots, carharts, top fleece, parka, liner gloves, mittens, balaclava, hat, neck gaiter, goggles). Bring your own ECW. The fastest time wins.

4:30 PM: Station champions: Meet in the Galley. Every team is made of 4 people. 1st person: from the galley run down the beer can, out to summer camp, house mouse the summer camp bathroom (just clean one of the mirrors), then run back to the station at DA; 2nd person: from DA go to the computer lab, log in, send an email to the course judge, and logout; 3rd person: run downstairs at DA, pick up three bags of mail, and take them to the post office; 4th person: run to the kitchen, wear apron, hat, and gloves, wash 5 dishes and 5 cups, undress, and cross the finish line in the galley.

Do we need a glossary?
ECW: Extreme Cold Weather, applies to gear
DA: Destination Alpha, main station entrance
DZ: Destination Zulu, station entrance near galley & summer camp
House Mouse: bathroom & lounge cleaning on schedule, everyone participates
sastrugi: snow dunes, typically of small vertical extent
Pax: passenger
Pax terminal: the spot you stand outside waiting for the plane
South Pole: yes, there are two of them, geographic and ceremonial
beer can: the corrugated steel vertical end segment of the station, contains stairs, service elevator, and utilities

The SOUTH POLE CONTINGENCY MARATHON

2011-01-15T17:38:00.001-06:00

Route map.

Polie marathon runners.

The race will start at 1:00pm (may need to adjust around tourist flights).
We will send out another email confirming the time as soon as we know.

(Hmmm…It’s not easy figuring out exactly 138,336 feet or 26.2 miles!)

Race Around the World 11088+
Geographic Marker to the skiway 2433+
10 lengths and a bit of the skiway 122433+
Skiway to Geographic Marker 2433
138,336

Show your support by coming out and running some or all of the race with us!
The first two miles of the race will follow the “Race Around the World” route.

Or by signing up as a volunteer for the event

We need help from volunteers to:
· Track Times
· Man the Aid Table
· Photograph the event
[sign up for one hour slots throughout the race]

… and to cheer us all on!

Volunteers please meet us at 10 AM Sunday in the galley and we will assign tasks.

Runners and everyone else meet us at the starting line – the South Pole Geographical marker at 12:45 or come out to run and/or cheer at any time.

Heavy equipment

2011-01-14T19:52:00.002-06:00

All of the heavy equipment is named. That's Mary Lou, the D8, plowing snow.

The view from the station looking out towards the satellite communications, with Mantis crane, palletized cargo, and cable reels in the middle.

New York Air National Guard ski-equiped LC-130 Hercules. Such an ugly, ugly plane, with a tail that seems too big for the rest of the plane, and those non-aerodynamic skis and (can't see from this picture) spine antennas. I think they started building these in 1958 or so, and they're still the way of dropping equipment into improvised runways like the South Pole skiway.

Departure of the drillers

2011-01-14T19:38:00.004-06:00

Group shot at the South Pole departure lounge.

Driller panorama...

...with Herc in the background...

The IceCube and ARA drillers have packed up all of their equipment, placed it into storage, and are now headed home. It's the best group of ice drillers in the world as far as we know. They did the hot water drilling for IceCube and ARA as well as RAM drilling for ARA this season. It'll be a far smaller crowd next year for the small-scale ARA deployments. But in a few years...

The berms

2011-01-14T19:10:00.003-06:00

Science Berm "A"

Boxes on another berm.

Path between the berms.

At the lumber berm.

Spare buildings.

Initially we think of how hard it is, and how expensive it is, to ship anything to the South Pole. From the Continental US (ConUS in military transport parlance) everything ships to Port Huaneme in California, there it goes by ship to Christchurch in New Zealand, after that it's flown by military cargo plane (C-17s mostly) to McMurdo Base on the Antarctic coast, and then finally on a ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules transport to the South Pole. Whew!

Well, this place is actually overflowing with old cargo, some of which has sat for decades. Equipment from old experiments, extra building materials (an entire cargo line just of lumber), shipping crates, mil vans, old sets of stairs, boxed up weatherports (canvas arched buildings), and supplies ordered long-ago which sit, inventoried, but unloved.

One of our colleagues on the South Pole Telescope tells a story from when he was wintering over and needed to use some grease. He found a 55 gallon drum with a Shell logo and a part number, but he wanted to know the specifications so he emailed Shell. This stuff hadn't been made in forty years.

All of these goods are stored in long berms, elevated a few feet above the plowed paths, the contents of the berms have to be hand-shoveled out each year.

Low contrast

2011-01-13T13:54:00.002-06:00

Road to the TestBed. Navigate from flag to flag.

When it's bright and sunny here, it's easy to take good photos and see what I'm trying to show. But when it gets cloudy and there's blowing snow, the contrast goes away and everything becomes a nearly uniform shade of white. These are a couple of photos of my recent visit to the TestBed to look at the drifting-in process there.

House mouse

2011-01-10T17:24:00.003-06:00

Another little Polie thing, every week we get to clean the bathroom. Inside your bedroom door there's a sign telling you which day of the week to go and help clean. Folks also pitch in cleaning in the kitchen, and cooking as well. The scheduled weekly cleanup is called "house mouse."

South Pole food

2011-01-08T20:24:00.003-06:00

The South Pole runs on its collective stomach it seems. Our head chef James Brown (no relation, I think) runs a nice operation preparing four meals per day (midnight rations "Mid-Rats" as well as the normal three, there are night and swing shifts in some departments). I have great respect for the folks who come down to the South Pole to wash dishes ten hours per day...

There's the dining staff doing their hero picture at the ceremonial South Pole.

New Year's Party at the South Pole

2011-01-08T20:11:00.003-06:00

There was music...

...costumes...

...IceCube winterovers...

...and Perry in a tux.

The RAM drill

2011-01-08T19:56:00.003-06:00

One of the activities this season at the Pole for the ARA experiment was the testing of the RAM (Rapid Air Movement) drill. This drill uses a convoy of air compressors to spin a cutting head, and then uses the rest of the air flow to blow the chips (snow & ice bits) out of the hole. Mike Jayrad is the operator of the drill and did a fantastic job proving its viability at the South Pole. Many people thought it wouldn't work at all at high altitude and with the very porous firn (top layer of packed snow).

The train of vehicles is the tow tractor/dozer, three Ingersol-Rand air compressors, and then the hose reel+generators+controls on the last sled.

PQing

2011-01-08T19:02:00.003-06:00

The process of being Physically Qualified to go to Antarctica via the US Antarctic Program is one of the important steps before coming down to the 7th Continent. You get an envelope of papers to fill out detailing your medical history, then you get a physical exam, have lots of blood drawn, go to the dentist, send all of the paperwork in, find out that they've lost the paperwork, and send it again. Then you wait a couple of weeks to hear back from them. (Them in this case is the medical office of Raytheon Polar Services Corporation. Yep, a little division of the company that makes missiles and bombs also runs much of the US Antarctic Program. All of the RPSC folks down here are friendly, hard-working people, but their bureaucracy back in Denver is legendary.) It seems to be a formality for reasonably healthy folks. But a necessary hurdle to pass.