Thursday, June 8, 2017 - 3:30pm
Another busy week for IceCube’s winterovers—they were paged several times to deal with crashes and other irregularities. Despite the activity, the detector was quite stable with minimal down time. The station had a special Memorial Day lunch last week, complete with hamburgers and hotdogs. And auroras!
Friday, June 2, 2017 - 9:00am
Last week, IceCube’s winterovers were quite busy. There were a few battery and other power supply failures to troubleshoot and reckon with, and a couple of other minor detector issues—all resolved smoothly though. In station life, they celebrated The Big Lebowski Night and international Towel Day.
Friday, May 26, 2017 - 12:30pm
Kael Hanson, WIPAC director and a professor of physics at UW–Madison, has been awarded a UW2020: WARF Discovery Initiative grant to explore the potential of the Askaryan radio detection method in the future upgrade of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the so-called IceCube-Gen2 facility.
Friday, May 26, 2017 - 12:00pm
Last week at the Pole saw the start of a new physics run and some other detector maintenance tasks. Meanwhile, the bright moon had set, allowing auroras to take over the skies once again. And take over they did.
Thursday, May 25, 2017 - 9:00am
It’s that time of the year. Down at the South Pole, our team is in the darkness of the austral winter, enjoying beautiful auroras while monitoring IceCube data taking. Up north, the team has completed all updates and checks to the new data systems running live in the IceCube Lab (ICL), sitting on top of the IceCube detector on Antarctica’s surface.
Thursday, May 18, 2017 - 12:00pm
There are privileges that come with winterovering at the South Pole. Being able to step outside and gaze up at spectacular aurora displays is one of them. Working in the dish pit? Well, maybe that’s on the other side of that coin.
Friday, May 12, 2017 - 2:15pm
If you find yourself at the South Pole, and the sky above you is sparkling with stars and shimmering with auroras, you might just want to lie down and stare straight up for best effect. That’s what winterover Martin did recently, seen here in front of the flags at the ceremonial South Pole.
Wednesday, May 10, 2017 - 1:00pm
The Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) was excited to recently host two meetings on the UW–Madison campus. The IceCube Collaboration spring meeting was held from May 2–6 at Union South, and the 2017 IceCube Particle Astrophysics Symposium: Multimessenger Astronomy (IPA 2017) followed, from May 8–10, at Discovery and Union South.
Friday, May 5, 2017 - 3:00pm
It surely is a staircase to the stars. That’s the ICL’s staircase, set against a backdrop of bright auroras low in the sky with a wide swath of the Milky Way above. Last week at the Pole was very much like the previous one—a well-behaved, quiet detector and an active night sky.
Friday, April 28, 2017 - 3:00pm
Arms up—let’s hear it for auroras! With an extremely stable IceCube detector that needed little attention last week, IceCube winterover Martin was able to train his focus on the glorious skies.