Where do you live?
13 Nov 2016
Just a very quick post, in the rare moment when Saturday night and internet access align. It's 00:30 local right now, and I should probably go to bed soon. My job down here is 7 days a week, since the various instruments and status checks we need to do must be done every day.
In the meantime, here are a couple of photos of my room. One doesn't come to the pole for a luxurious experience. I'm an individual of simple tastes, so this is fine for my needs. I have a chair to sit in for the times when we have internet, and when I'm unconscious I don't care how far away the wall is. The penguin is a humidifier. If you look closely in the upper right, you might see a clothesline. The air here is so dry that I can hang a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and multiple wool shirts to dry at 9pm, and they are bone dry by 7am.
The astute amongst you will note the beer in the windowsill, or as I think of it, the refrigerator. For some reason our window frames are metallic and stay about 5 C. That means the window constitutes an ideal energy efficient refrigerator for any aluminum can/glass bottle making good contact against the sides and bottom.
My room
The cardboard window covering was there when I moved in. It's essential since the sun doesn't set here. There's a slight light leak in one corner and through a small hole. They let in the perfect amount of light so that my room seems like it is lit by a bright full moon. Just enough so that I don't fall when getting out of my very high bed, but plenty dark enough for sleep.
Just down my hall, right now
It's a well-known fact that the pole only has one sunrise and one sunset per year, but it's still an odd experience to actually live that. This photo was taken at local midnight, from the window at the end of the hall outside my room. The buildings you see are various support buildings, holding carpentry supplies, electronic equipment, etc. It's exactly this bright all the time. At my 7am wake-up, and my midnight bedtime.
Mention of sunrise and sunset is maybe a good opportunity to ask, somewhat sheepishly: When exactly is the "overwinter" period of the year? We just realized you got there before "winter" starts, but we were thinking in terms of the northern hemisphere's winter. So are you transitioning into your summer now?
ReplyDeleteIndeed, it's a lovely spring day here at south pole. It's gotten dramatically warmer in just the two weeks I've been here, moving from -50C (-60F) the day I landed to currently -34C (-29F). High summer, in Dec/Jan can get up to -10C!
ReplyDelete"Winter" is mostly defined to be mid-Feb through Oct. During this period, temps average too cold to operate planes (getting down to -75C, -100F at the extreme), and south pole is completely cut off from mail, food deliveries, passengers leaving or arriving, etc. The departure of the last plane (around 15 Feb) is called "station close," and the arrival of the first plane (around 20 Oct) is called "station open." There will be about 50 of us here through the winter.
Actual sunset and sunrise are on the equinoxes (21 March and 21 Sept), but the exact moment is of course surrounded on both sides by several weeks of twilight. Just like the moment of sunrise and sunset you're used to, but slowed down.
Right now the sun is relatively high in the sky and just circles. It's bright and sunny 24-7. From the poles, the sun just circles the sky, and only moves vertically due to the earth's inclination to its orbit.
Wow. What a weird life you have now. OK that makes more sense, thanks - I guess I'd thought you'd be there for 9 months starting November, which seemed out of sync with southern winter.
DeleteI'm here for one full calendar year, both summer and winter. I arrived 29 Oct, and I'll leave sometime around early Nov 2017. The station is in full summer mode now, with a population of 115 as I write this (our galley info screens show a running total).
DeleteSummers are very high activity, as the USAP packs in all sorts of repairs and construction projects wile they can ship in supplies and have people on site who are skilled, but not crazy enough to stay for the winter.
Weeks of twilight? I mean, that totally makes sense when you think about it, but how delightfully creepy that must be!
ReplyDeleteI can't wait for this part!
DeleteWoah, and I just compared the timestamp of that comment with my current time: I'm commenting from the future y'all!!
ReplyDeleteWeeks of twilight would be pretty amazing! I imagine there are some circadian rhythms getting all out of sync with so much sunlight all night!
ReplyDeleteSo you mention that you have to do instrument and status checks every day. Can you say more about what your work entails down there? Are you conducting your own research? Technical assistance? I'm no astrophysicist so the nitty gritty details probably won't mean anything to me, but I'm definitely generally interested in all branches of science!
ReplyDeleteAlso, as someone who studied circadian rhythms for a long time, I'm curious. Other than the cardboard on your window, do you have to do anything else to deal with the sunlight? Do you have trouble getting to sleep? What about the winter (although maybe I should ask this again after February) - Does the station have those bright lights for the winter?
I haven't had to do anything else. With my room blacked out well, the lighting of my life probably isn't that different from yours. During the day it's sunny, and the last few hours of my day are spent inside, under artificial lighting. When I'm reading in my room, it probably looks much like it does when you read in bed for a bit before bed. True, when I get up in the middle of the night to pee the hall light is a bit surprising since it's full daylight out there, but that's a brief interruption. I haven't had any trouble getting to sleep, since my room is nicely dark. Given the expected demographic of my readership, life down here is very analogous to college freshman dorm life.
DeleteI can see winter getting to people more than now. It's easy to simulate "normal" conditions now. A simple cardboard slab in the window and you have bright days and dark nights, sorted.
In the winter, however, there's no easy way to produce "normal" days. It's just going to be night, all the time, period. Personally, I think I'm the sort of person who can adapt to that without too much trouble, but I can understand why some people would find that hard. We do have a collection of "happy lights" around the station. Ask me again in July, I'll tell you if they're useful :-)
I think a bigger challenge down here is the altitude. We're at a pressure of ~685 mb, which is equivalent to an altitude of 3100 m or 10,500 ft (the divers amongst you will note that standard sea level pressure is 1013 mb). That's higher than any town in the US. We've had two people this season medevaced within a day due to altitude problems. Even after a month I occasionally catch myself breathing heavier than I normally would for a given amount of exertion. I look froward to returning to sea level next November. I'm going to be a super hero, and be able to dive forever on a mere 80.