Another cold day

It's frigid outside again. The temperature is -32 degrees F with winds at 26 knots making a nice wind chill of -95 degrees F. The winds are blowing up so much snow, its hard to see other buildings right now. Antarctica is crazy cold...

Another launch

Well we were able to get another balloon off the ground. We have been waiting for 2 days since its been super cold and super windy. The wind finally died down enough for us to do it today. Though it has been a trying day to say the least but thankfully I have way too much patience for one person and am able to hold my tongue when I need to. Smile and nod! I've been holding the balloon the last couple of launches which I like, it makes me feel important. I like letting it go and watching it float up and drag the instruments with it.

I suppose I should explain a balloon launch a little more since that's the primary reason I'm here. Most of the balloons we send up are carrying an ozonesonde with it. This sonde measures the ozone as it floats up as well as the temperature, pressure and relative humidity. The balloons usually go up to about 30 km into the atmosphere and we get a nice profile of the ozone. We are then able to tell where the ozone hole is starting, how deep it is, etc. I'll get into the science of everything later but here are some pictures of a normal launch.
First we spread out the inlet tube and Leslie gets into position to fill the balloon with helium. Mahesh helps her while Terry and I are at the other end with the balloon.
Next Mahesh turns on the helium and Leslie fills the balloon with enough helium to lift the "weigh off" (its a big hook with weights on it) up off the ground. This is just enough helium to lift the instrument and balloon up into the sky.
After it has enough helium, Terry ties off the inlet tube. I have the all important job of holding the balloon. Yep that's me...pretty beastly I know.
Then Leslie and Terry tie on the ozonesonde to the balloon and we spread out the rest of it in a line...
Then "Let go!" and the balloon is off...
and it floats up...
and away. All these pictures are courtesy of Willem Buitendyk who was watching our August 27th launch and was kind of enough to give us copies of his pictures. (Thanks!)

The balloons are so long because as it floats higher, the gas inside expands with the decreasing pressure. This allows enough room for expansion to get the balloon up into the stratosphere. Once it goes up to where the gas expands to fill the entire balloon, it pops and comes plummeting back to earth where it crashes and burns in a huge fire ball of flame... hehe just kidding, it just falls to the ground and stays there. Then we just wait for it to go up and back down and collect the data it sends back to us on the trip. These are small balloons compared to the ones we send up with the larger instruments. We have 5 large instruments to launch this year but it hasn't been calm enough to do those yet. I will let you know when we get one off the ground. Stay tuned for more exciting balloon launching stories!!

Cold Alert!

The day keeps getting colder. Its the coldest it has been since I arrived. The temperature is -35 degrees F with 30 knots of wind. The wind chill is -104 degrees F. Brrr...Enough said.

Cold and Tired

Its -28 degrees F with 37 mph winds today... cold. Just walking from the galley to the lab, about 150 feet maybe, it was enough to freeze my face off. I'm completely pooped today too, I just finished taking a nap on my office floor for the last hour. Thats right, my nap was at 8:00 this morning, I just couldn't wake up. But I've been here a week, made it through week number one on the ice. We have accomplished a lot in the lab, 2 successful balloon launches and we are ready to launch one of our big instruments. Leslie and I have been building masts and preparing ozonesondes. Mahesh has built our big instruments. We can all run the big scary laser. My favorite thing so far is driving our big van around, its fun.
I earned my beastly badge yesterday in van driving, it was amazing, I backed all the way around a corner and up a ramp to a building. It was pretty hot.

The views are amazing here too, I always like to just look around and wonder, its just crazy that I'm actually here in Antarctica... I amaze myself sometimes. For those who don't know where I am exactly, its McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Here is a map and the red circle is McMurdo:
McMurdo is located on Ross Island in the McMurdo sound by the Ross Ice Shelf. We can see Mt Erebus, Mt Terror, Black Island, White Island and the mountains across the sound from different places on the station. I'll get more pictures of them later.

Here is a better map of Ross Island for anyone interested. So now that we've all had our geography lesson for the day, here are a couple of things I can see from the door by our lab. This is Mount Discovery across the ice shelf. This mountain is attached to the Trans-Antarctic mountain range which runs along the edge of the continent.

Here are some of the Trans-Antarctic mountains. This is one of the most amazing mountain ranges I have ever seen. Absolutely beautiful. That is the permanent ice shelf you are looking at as well, the mountains are across the shelf.
I'll get some more pictures and keep putting them up. I have to be able to stand being outside for more than 2 minutes. :)

By the way, Leslie just told me it is -30 degrees F right now, thats just the temperature, not wind chill. Stay warm everyone!!

Hey Leave Some Comments

Please, I would love to read comments from you about the blog and pictures and things. Its nice to hear from you all.

Getting gear and arriving on the ice

Christchurch is where the Antarctic Center is located. People going to McMurdo check in here and get their gear and everything else we needed to know.
This is an example wall of all the gear we are issued and have to wear on the plane down to the station and while out an about on the ice. They call the big red coats "Big Red" and the boots are called "bunny boots". It all keeps you nice and warm.
Here is 3:00 in the morning on the day we left and we just picked up all the gear and were going through security to get on the C-17 we were taking to the ice.
Packed in like sardines in a tin can. :)
View from my seat.
I'm ready!
My first view of the ice and Antarctica. Brr!
The first polar stratospheric clouds I'd ever seen! This is exciting for me because my thesis is all about these clouds and you can only see them in arctic environments. I'll explain more about these later.
Heading to McMurdo Station from Pegasus (the airstrip). The big mountain is Mt. Erebus, an active volcano and the little pointy one on its left is where the station is. We are driving on the permanent ice shelf right now. I'm on the ocean!
McMurdo! My new home! The vehicle in front of us is "Ivan the Terra Bus" and I'll take a picture of him later.

I'll get some more picture up later of some the scenery from around the station and other interesting things I found! Woo I'm in Antarctica!! The bottom of the earth!!

Pictures of New Zealand

OK I'm trying to get some pictures on here but this blogger thing is not acting like its supposed to and I'm having trouble with them.

Here is a park right by our hotel near the river in Christchurch.

This is the Windsor B&B where we stayed while in NZ. It was a really cute hotel and the people were so nice and friendly. The breakfast was fantastic as well, my favorite was the creamed corn and grilled tomatoes.

When we left for the day, whoever cleaned our room would tuck Mango in bed every day. It was so cute!

The middle of downtown Christchurch has a local square where there is a huge cathedral shown above. They also have a tram running through town that gives a nice tour and some history of Christchurch, shown below.

Leslie and I went to a historical museum one day. There were great displays of Maui culture, when settlers came and early Antarctic explorers. Below, we were in the early transportation room and I just had to ride in the carriage and try out the crazy bike. It was the stairs getting up to the bike that I fell down and twisted my ankle, that's what you get for goofing around I guess.

I will try to get some Antarctic pictures up soon for you all to see.

By the way, we had another successful balloon launch yesterday (Sammy Sonde). Leslie and I decided we are going to name every ozonesonde we send up now. So Sammy was a really smooth launch and it wasn't even that cold out, only -11 degrees F and very little wind.