Station Tour Part 2

Part 2 of the tour starts in the Vehicle Maintenance Facility which is next door to the power plant.

The sun will set on Saturday March 23rd. 

And will rise in 6 months. Pictures taken on March 20th at 1 am.

The ceremonial South Pole.

In the Vehicle Maintenance Facility

A Logan Motor Company (LMC). This is the Canadian version of the German Pisten Bully.

This version seats 4 in the cab and is driven by a two throttle levers for speed and direction.

One of the Dark Sector offices. Do you think there are enough monitors? I counted 8.

It is quite a walk to the main station so there is a bed available in the office. The Rack looks a little difficult to access.

Messy science guys.

The station manager drove us around in this LMC that seats 4 in the front and another 4-6 in the back.

The South Pole Telescope was scanning the skies.

The IceCube Lab a $270 million project to study Neutrinos. Part of the Neutrino Telescope.

I wrote about IceCube on a previous post. There are 86 drilled holes up to 1.2 miles deep each containing a string of 60 Digital Optical Modules each.

IceCube drill camp 2009.

A Digital Optical Module (DOM). There are 5,160 DOMs buried and encased in ice to capture neutrinos.

The locations of some of the holes.

To the left of the meteorological station flags mark one of the 86 holes.

Each string of 60 DOMs has cables running up out of the ice into the computer server room of the lab. There are 86 computer servers in the lab.

On the far side of the radomes. Station to the right.

The Vehicle Maintenance Facility, Power plant, and logistics storage area are built under corrugated steel arches. The leftovers are stored here.

The leftover pieces turned into an art project.

Spoolhenge - The Antarctic's version of Stonehenge with leftover cable spools. There used to be 86 of these cable spools as they stored the cables that hold the DOMs in the ice holes of the IceCube Project.

This area of fuel tanks is called "The End of the World".

Inside the current Rodwell (water well) #3. On a previous post I explained how the South Pole generates water.

This water well is currently at 284 feet melting ice (with hot water) in a huge reservoir and pumping out the water for station use.

The water well rig.

Rodwell #3.

On the right is Rodwell #2. To the left is the station where raw sewage is pumped into the old well.

The arched Vehicle Maintenance Facility, Logistics, and the Power Plant.

Filling up the LMC at the end of the tour. The shadows are getting long.

I recently celebrated another birthday on ice. My friend Will, on the left, posted this picture from last winter on the galley televisions scroll. The guy added in on the upper left is an inside joke.