More from Summit Station:
Radiosonde launching. A radiosonde is launched twice a day, synchronized with others around the world and playing an important part in weather forecasting (I think?). I helped launch one later... on a day with 30 kt winds... it was pretty fun other than the giant balloon banging against my head all the time).
Someone's frisbee golf creation
Menacing clouds. The weather was terrible in general this year. The ANG was supposed to fly 12 flights while I was there. They managed 3. More on the return flight later...
Barbara, the Arctic Truck. Supposedly she worked this year, but I didn't see her in action. (Primarily, it's a search and rescue vehicle). In the back you can see the berthing mod and summer village.
The Summit Mobile Garage. Inside is storage, a maintenance area for vehicles, office space and the main generator for the station.
The berthing mod on the left (which has 5 small bedrooms and 6th one masquerading as a clinic, as well as a bathroom, shower and laundry). I've never slept in there since it's usually reserved for station staff. On the right are fish huts, which I've also never slept in, but are used in summer and are somewhat heated.
This year and in 2021 I slept in the Flarm. Basically a giant refrigerator with 3 bunk beds inside. Comfy with 3 people, crowded with 6. In 2015, I slept in tents, but that's before the polar bear visit of 2017 led to the institution of hard-sided berthing.
Summit group picture for the solstice (which I happened to take... since I had my tripod and intervalometer). This was sent to all the Antarctic camps as part of the mid-winter greeting (even though it was summer for us). Station was at max capacity (42 people, probably some people missed the picture). Sorry Desantis, it was June, so there's a pride flag out.
Station from a bit farther away, from one of our detector sites
A hole in the ice. We put antennas up to 100 m down into the ice to look for radio emission from cosmic neutrinos smashing into the ice. This season we didn't deploy any new stations, but we took advantage of an ice coring team there to have them drill a small hole for us to put a calibration antenna in.
In goes the antenna
Our prototype wind turbines, to attempt to power our stations farther into winter (as we're solar powered). They... uh... froze over winter, so they didn't work so great.
whiteout conditions are terrible for finding your stations, but they make for great pictures. The only exposed parts are the panels, in this case a prototype turbine, and the comms / GPS antennas. The flags mark places we've buried antennas.
Us testing a melting probe from a German company. If it proves successful, this might allow a more hands-off way of making shallowish holes.
Fun light. (On the right is the S'Mobil, a shop space, and on the left in front of the garage is the water melter)
Staring off into nothing (and it was snowing ... or blowing snow, I can't remember)
Sundog over our deployment hut (which we tow around by snowmobile as needed)
More sundog
Another sundog, from the Big House balcony over the summer village (the red building to the right of the flarm is the caboose, more bunks but in individual small rooms instead of all in a big room). To the left of the flarm is the sauna.
And... another batch of on-ice pictures will come later, including our harrowing return...
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