have an ICE day

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Housing Fun Day

Our department tries to have a Fun Day once a month or so to keep up morale. Since Win-Fly is coming to an end and chances to get a vehicle or two will be few and far between, we got to go on a little adventure today. There were three different parts to our tour. Our "tour guide" Erik Richards works for NASA and was able to take us to 2 different NASA research centers. And in between visiting both of those centers, we were also given permission to visit Arrival Heights, a research station where both McMurdo and Scott Base have centers.

PART I

In one of the vans on the way up the hill.

At Ra-Sat (short for Radar-Satellite), a NASA research site - commonly known as the Golf Ball. The view was amazing!

PART II

At Arrival Heights, an ASPC (Antarctic Specially Protected Area) which you need special permission to visit (unless you work there, of course). In the first photo you can see Bec, the science tech who works there. She is explaining what all the machines behind her study.

Views of the Erebus Ice Tongue (the shiny part on the right). In front of it (through the middle of the photo) are Razorback Island, Inaccessible Island, and tiny Tent Island. This photo was taken at Arrival Heights, a research center near McMurdo Station in Antarctica.

view of erebus ice tongue and islands from AH

Walking down the snow drift in front of the kiwi research center at Arrival Heights.

A Dobson Spectrophotometer made in 1923 and still used today in the New Zealand research center at Arrival Heights. It measures the thickness of the Ozone Layer. Right now there is a large hole in the ozone over the whole of Antarctica. On average, the ozone layer is 5 mm thick, but over Antarctica it is only an average of 1.5 mm thick!