IceCube winterover Johannes’s camera withstood a time-lapse session outdoors last week—a little frosty looking afterward but still able to crank out some fine-looking photos.
False alarm from week 32—aurora viewing remained in full force last week at the Pole. In fact, the skies were graced with some purple auroras, pretty rare in general, even at the bottom of the world.
Who knows, but it could be that this fantastic shot is the last we’ll see of the auroras from the Pole for a while. So, why not go out with a bang—big, bright, and set against a starry Milky Way backdrop.
It was a pretty busy time last week at the Pole. IceCube’s winterovers had some unrelated hardware incidents that required troubleshooting and fixing, and a trip out to the IceCube Lab. And look what a great photo winterover Raffaela captured on that trip, with the ICL backlit by a full moon.
Last week the weather was a bit mixed, and the winterovers had their lunar eclipse viewing marred by blowing snow. Regardless, they still got together outdoors for a group photo.
There were two bingos last week at the Pole: (1) the game, where some improvising was required for the tiles, and (2) the exclamation, which was well warranted for IceCube’s recent multimessenger results.
Last week at the Pole, the weather was perfect for starting out the second half of winter—cold but calm conditions, with some of the prettiest auroras.
The 4th of July is now behind us, but this view of the South Pole station continues with the red, white, and blue theme, while the other side of the station just shows the blue sky and the white snow. These image were only possible due to a bright moon, bright enough to illuminate the tracks in the snow surface.
The recent stretch of bad weather finally broke, showing off some nice auroras. Here, you can make out a bright spot in the sky, which is Mars, soon to reach its closest approach to Earth in many years.
Midwinter is approaching, so the winterovers got together for a group photo that they’ll use to send out traditional greetings to other stations. Looks like a bunch of happy campers.