ARTEMIS

ARTEMIS Timelapse

Justin made a really nice timelapse showing the delivery of ARTEMIS to the bot house. Check out the youtube link above, or his original post on the SIMPLE blog.

Reporting by Peter Kimball

The McMurdo Sound – Live @ Gallagher’s

Trips to the band room have continued to be the primary recreational activity for those of us in The McMurdo Sound. We had such a fun time at the Carp Shop Party that we really wanted to play again before John heads back to West Virginia this Friday. The forces of scheduling smiled upon us, and we were booked to play live at Gallagher’s (one of two Bars on station) this past Saturday. We headlined the night (ha!), with some super-talented musicians playing before us.

We came back to town on Saturday triumphant from moving ARTEMIS into the bot house in the afternoon. That happiness, combined with tremendous excitement for the upcoming gig was quite a feeling.

We’ve expanded our repertoire since the Carp Shop Party. We played the following set list on Saturday night:

1. Stray Cat Strut
2. Paint It Black
3. You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive
4. Comfortably Numb
5. House of the Rising Sun
6. Bacon Boy
7. Locomotive Breath
8. White Wedding
9. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
10. Wanted Dead or Alive
11. Whole Lotta Love
12. Tribute

Bacon Boy is an original song by Chris, which he performed solo. It was a huge hit. We had one of the Crary Lab Assistants, David, join us on stage to sing Whole Lotta Love – another crowd favorite. The rest of the set uses the same lineup as we had at the Carp Shop Party, but with the excellent change of having John sing verses on Comfortably Numb.

We remain not very good at playing music, but we have improved quite a bit in the last few weeks. We had huge energy on Saturday, the crowd was awesome, and we couldn’t have enjoyed ourselves more.

Mischievous elements within McMurdo Station plotted to throw undergarments on stage during White Wedding, one of our best songs. Peter’s video from the back of the room captures the show rather well, including the flying undies. Here are some frames:

Reporting by Peter Kimball

ARTEMIS in the House

After series of frustrating weather and logistics delays over the past few weeks, we moved ARTEMIS out to our field site yesterday. October 24th is later than we hoped, but it’s very exciting nevertheless. This is a huge milestone in the project, and we feel very close to getting ARTEMIS beneath Antarctic ice for the first time.

The move on Saturday was a huge cooperative effort between USAP Fleet Ops folks and the SIMPLE team. Getting ARTEMIS into the bot house was a tight fit requiring some elaborate choreography. The call was made early in the day to hold off for a few hours to get better weather. This paid off in a big way as we had some of the calmest winds we’ve seen over our whole deployment in the early afternoon. It was a stressful operation, but we succeeded without incident, and returned to McMurdo in high spirits just before dinner.

Here are some views around our field camp in the beautiful weather we had for the move:

ARTEMIS sits on its cradle in the bot house. (photo: Peter Kimball)

Reporting by Peter Kimball

Prepping the Site

With recent arrivals of Luke Winslow and Peter Doran the SIMPLE field team now numbers 13 – a serious science force. We were in full-swing yesterday with some of the team working on vehicle software on station, and some of us working parallel tasks at the field site.

Inside the bot house, we worked to clear ice from the ARTEMIs culvert. That culvert was set weeks ago, and has frozen in during the weather-delayed construction of the bot house.

Meanwhile, we also supported fleet ops in dragging our fish hut off its drill hole, widening that hole, and installing a culvert there.

By lowering a fish cam through the ARTEMIS culvert (in the bot house), we were able to verify that the new fish hut culvert extends deep enough to clear the forming platelets beneath our field camp.

Reporting by Peter Kimball

The Last Sunset

As dark as it’ll be at our camp for months. (photo: Peter Kimball)

The polar transition from 24-hour darkness to 24-hour daylight is a very gradual one. We haven’t seen stars at night for several weeks now. And while today doesn’t look perceptibly different from yesterday, we are now technically entering a summer of continuous direct sunlight. Of course, we may lose the sun behind Mt. Discovery for another night or two, and we’ll have a few more nights with pastel colors at midnight, but it’s now daytime all the time here at McMurdo.

We were at our fish hut until 4am last night doing Sunfish tests. I got a chance to step outside and take a few photos of the last sunset I’ll see until I return to the U.S. next month.

Reporting by Peter Kimball