On the Road

Another perfect day with little wind gives our “balloonatics” another chance to launch an ozone balloon. An earlier midday launch yielded no data so we repeat the performance after dinner. Every day we’ve been having very nice displays PSCs (type II Polar Stratospheric Clouds) which inform our scientists that the atmosphere bears watching….and measuring. Roberto is wrapping up his LIDAR experiments as it’s becoming too light at night. We can now view beautiful sunsets all night and the South Pole is continuously bathed in sunlight for the next six months. In two weeks we expect continuous daylight for almost that long. The ice runway is nearly finished allowing the Main Body to arrive next week. Stay tuned….

Shown here is the Barne Glacier with Mt. Erebus in the background. This ice tongue is emerald green, extremely hard and extremely cold–a poor choice for ice climbing. The Barne Glacier is located on the west side of Ross Island between Cape Evans (location of Scott’s Hut) and Cape Royds (location of Shackleton’s Hut) about 20 miles north of McMurdo Base. We have just finished a climb of the hightest point on Tent Island which is a remnant of an old crater, now partially submerged. Stay tuned…

An eerie green glow is frequently seen in the dark hours here at McMurdo: that of the LIDAR or Light Detection and Ranging instruments emerging from Crary Labs. Built by Roberto Morbidini from Rome, Italy, this is one fantastic machine! More impressive than its looks is the sound it makes; worthy of any sci-fi film. It’s chief purpose is to measure PSC’s (see August 27) and correlate the altitudes of these clouds to the ozone hole above us. Shown here is the machine viewed as it exits the building, and finally bottoms out on clouds many miles above. Faint sparkles of ice crystals can be seen traversing this laser beam. This technology can be land based as at McMurdo, launched under a balloon or directed earthward from space. The shuttle uses LIDAR technology to determine not only it’s altitude, but the quality of the surface it passes over. See http://core2.gsfc.nasa.gov/lapf/sla/sla1.html for details.