Let the games begin! The South Pole Winter Games, that is. They feature an eclectic line-up of events, including vertical tower sprint and photography. IceCube winterovers James and Martin signed up for some individual trials but also formed a team to compete in volleyball.
Last week the IceCube detector had almost perfect uptime. There was also a continuing poker tournament, a birthday celebration, and auroras that seemed to be getting into the spirit of the 4th of July.
What a busy week at the Pole. It was Midwinter there, marking the halfway point of the long, dark winter. They held their traditional viewing of “The Shining” and celebratory dinner, including salads, menus, and fancy décor. Also last week was the culmination of a station-wide facial hair contest.
The moon was up last week, making it quite bright outside—it almost looks like sunshine. But it’s winter at the Pole, and IceCube’s winterovers have been busy. They had to trek out to the ICL for one thing or another, and they also performed some regular maintenance procedures on DOMs, both in the ice and in IceTop.
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!
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.
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.
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.
