Last June, attendees at the Neutrino 2012 international conference heard about two rare events observed by the IceCube neutrino telescope. Science-trained eyes immediately classified them as something they had never seen before. In a paper submitted to Physical Review Letters, the IceCube Collaboration confirms that those two events are the two highest energy neutrinos ever observed.

You may know that the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater is home to an observatory, giving people a look at the visual Universe. Many people don’t know, though, that Wisconsin played a major role in the construction and management of one of the world’s largest and most interesting telescopes.

The lowering sun is providing for some great photos, like these long shadows in front of and behind the IceCube Lab (ICL). The winterovers spent some time doing various things out in the cold this week. They raised their country flags—Chile, the US, and the Philippines—on the roof of the ICL.

There’s work and then there’s play. And sometimes play can take a lot of work. Like building an igloo at the South Pole, for example—check it out. You can see it in progress during construction, above, and the view from inside, looking through the “sun roof,” after completion, below.