The makings of an Ice Runway...

These are some pictures of the Heavy Equipment operators starting to build our ice runway so that planes can fly in at winfly. Winfly begins late august and ends around the first or second week of october. Yes, that is not a typing error, planes do land on the sea ice down here, therefore the heavy equipment operators are always grooming the runway to make sure there are no bumps or holes in the runway that may cause any damage to the aircrafts.

Different angles of town...

Here is a beautiful half moon in Mcmurdo, a nice view of town from Scott hut, a view of the cross by scott hut, and a view of town coming in from the runway.

Balloon Launch...

The winter ozonesonde balloon launches are part of an IPY project called the ORACLE-O3 Campaign which is being coordinated by the Alfred-Wegener Institute in Germany. Nine Antarctic stations are participating in this research.
The goal of the ORACLE-O3 Campaign is to track ozone in specific air parcels within the stratosphere throughout the winter and spring. This campaign is similar to the QUOBI campaign of 2003. These campaigns are sometimes referred to as “Match Campaigns” because of the air parcel tracking methodology used. A computer model is used to predict the movement of the air parcels through which each of the seed sondes were launched and those parcels will now be tracked throughout the winter. Whenever one of air parcels is over any of the nine stations, another sonde will be launched to collect subsequent data on that particular air parcel, i.e. to match the previous data set. Thus data is collected through the season on the change in ozone in each of the air parcels. This technique has been used in the Arctic several times but this is only the second time it has been used in the Antarctic.
The balloons that carry the ozonesondes to approximately 30 km (100,000 ft.) are made of 0.3 mil thick polyethylene plastic and have a maximum volume of 19,000 cubic feet (~ 26 ft high by 37 ft in diameter). The payload consists of the ozonesonde which uses electrochemistry to detect ozone, a radiosonde for measuring temperature, pressure and relative humidity and a gps unit. The radiosonde transmits the data back to the receiving stations at Crary and Cosray for the duration of the balloon’s flight. The payload package weighs about five pounds.

A typical flight lasts about three and a half hours and the balloon will reach an altitude of ~ 30 km before bursting and coming back down. In general, the balloons travel out over the Ross Ice Shelf and can go up to 100 miles before bursting and returning to the ground.

As the sunlight returns, so does amazing skies

These are some pictures of the sykline down here in Mcmurdo as the sun begins to rise again. I cannot express how beautiful and colorful they are. If i wasn't here myself, i think i would have a hard time believing that these pictures were real.

More Auroras, and Me...

Here are some pictures of Auroras seen coming back from Byrd Island, And Me Playing the star spangle banner on bass guitar for the 4th of july.

Different Views of the sky...

Moon behind ob hill, aurora floating across the sky at Scott Base(New Zealand base), A Bull-dozer carving out a road to the run way, A cloudy sky covers the moon behind ob hill, Moon over the sea Ice.