Feb 28 - At last an Aurora

Everyone asks about the Auroras and how spectacular they looked, but
of course when you go to Antarctica during the summer, its is almost
always light and since you only see an Aurora when it's dark, we
didn't see any over the summer.

I was hoping that in the last week or two at Mawson, when we had a
few hours of darkness each night, that we might get lucky, but the
first time was tonight, partly because the maximal Aurora visibility
is actually a little way further north, which of course, has more
darkness.

(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_australis_20050911.jpg )

In 1831, John Biscoe, captain of the ship Tula, when surrounded by
icebergs at the Antarctic Circle wrote:

"Nearly the whole night the Aurora Australis showed the most
brilliant appearance, at times rolling itself over our heads in a
beautiful column, then as suddenly forming itself as the unrolled
fringe of a curtain, and again suddenly shooting to the form of a
serpent and at times appearing not many yards above us; it was
decidedly transacted in our own atmosphere, and was without exception
the grandest phenomenon of nature of its kind I have ever witnessed".

By way of contrast, I wrote:

"At about midnight, a few faint aurora was visible, although you
really had to stand in the dark for 5 minutes before your eyes
adapted enough to be able to see it. Then a faint green smudge could
be made out, eventually becoming more distinct. It fluctuates over
minutes, sometimes just a patch in the sky like green city lights
shining onto clouds, and then 15 minutes later, extending halfway
across the sky like a gigantic ribbon, which suddenly fades away
again over a couple of minutes."

The photographs were never going to be very good, since the aurora
was so faint and time exposures on a moving boat will blur out all
the details, but you can get an idea of what it looked like from up
on the top of the bridge, where it was minus 6 degrees and windy.
You can see how the boat's movement over the 30 second time exposure
has made nice little patterns out of the stars.

Feb 9 - Boating in the bergs

Now that the sea ice has gone, we can get our boats out and go for a
cruise out amongst the islands - and the icebergs. After dinner we
rugged up in several layers of fleece, then the waterproof immersion
suits, then a flotation jacket, gloves, 2 beanies and headed out - it
was about -2 and a slight breeze. After a couple hours of cruising
about we returned, about 10 pm just before sunset, but by then the
wind had picked up - nearly 20 knots, and minus 6, so by the time we
got back home I couldn't feel my fingers any more. Awful. I hate
boating.

Feb 5 - Some Weddell Seals

As the sea-ice has melted and retreated in the last few weeks, so we
are seeing more seals. Previously they had been living at the ice-
edge, with a few here and there where there is a crack in the ice
that they can come out of to breathe and to loll about on the ice,
but now they are everywhere. I counted 30 on the small patch of ice
just past the radio towers - about 2 minutes walk from the main red
shed of the station.

They have a very nice spotted light grey fur and generally lie about
in the sun barely moving for hours. Tonight after dinner, it was
overcast and cold but I went for a short walk and very nearly walked
right into some. One seemed to be sleeping underwater - it was
bobbing about, with only a small part of its back above the water's
surface, and the swell in the sea was rocking it back and forth,
knocking it gently into the rocks, and every 10 minutes it would
stick its head out to breathe for a minute or two, then went back
underneath, completely oblivious of me sitting there watching.

Feb 5 - A bit of practice surgery

In the unlikely event that someone is seriously ill or injured and
needs an operation, then of course the only medically trained person
at Mawson is the single doctor (that's me).

In order to have some assistants, 4 of the expeditioners have had 2
weeks of training at Hobart Hospital before we left, learning how to
be anaesthetic nurses or theatre nurses. By the end of that two
weeks, they had done a marvellous job and we ran through a pretend-
operation which went very well, and even made the TV news that night
in Tasmania.

That was 4 months ago, so as a refresher, we did another mock
operation today in the Mawson medical facility. One of our dodgy
expeditioners needed an operation (he had accidentally swallowed one
of his crampons), so we prepared him for theatre, got all the
equipment ready and then anaesthetised him and cut him up. It was a
bit of a rush job, as we needed to be done in time for lunch but I
still found time to take out his spleen and kidney as well, just for
good measure.

From left we have Matt, the IT guy, then Jasmine the chef, the
victim is Hully, who has been teaching us how to survive in the great
outdoors, then me and on the right is Nathan, one of the
electricians. The photographer is Andrew, the met observer, whose job
here was to be scout nurse.

We may not have been the slickest surgical team in the world, but I
think I've seen worse...

p

Jan 29 - Darkness!

It is half past midnight, and I was about to go to bed, when I looked
out the window to see... darkness. It was only a few weeks ago that I
didn't even need to have lights on inside even in the middle of the
night, and it is so long ago that I've seen darkness, that I had to
go and take a photograph of it.

The view is towards the east, from the steps just outside the
surgery, looking at the wind turbine (whizzing around nicely now in
the 30 knot wind) and the glaciers coming off the ice plateau. There
is always a bit more light over the plateau, and the sun is just
below the horizon over there, but after not seeing it for over 2
months, such darkness seems to be a very luscious kind of thing.

Jan 26 - Australia Day

Australia Day is celebrated here rather enthiusiastically. We had a
pig on a spit roasted in the diesel mechanics' shed, and the
obligatory game of cricket. The batsmen had to wear the special
Australia Day Green & Gold coloured wigs, and only a few injuries
were sustained on the uneven rock with pebbles all over it. It was 1
degree and sunny, but the wind was cold.

Jan 28 - Weather balloons

It was strangely windless here today, and cloudy like a Melbourne
day, so it looked like it was going to rain. Of course it doesn't
rain here - as I walked from one building to another, it started
just nicely snowing lightly. After all, it was 1 degree, and
overnight got down to about -4.

My main excitement today was that Andrew, the meteorology guy let me
release the weather balloon at 5.15. It went up to 116,000 feet
before it burst. It carries a radiosonde - an electronic device that
measures altitude, temperature, humidity and its position by GPS and radios them back to base, to be used for weather forecasting.

The second picture shows the tracing of the temperature (red) against the dew point (blue) as the balloon rises, which it does at about 300 metres per minute. The altitude at which the two lines meet corresponds to where the cloud level is, which in this case, is about 200 metres.

p

Jan 27 - The Cosmic Ray Detector telescopes

The cosmic ray detector lab here at Mawson has been running for about
25 years, detecting particles that zoom down when cosmic rays hit the
upper atmosphere. This year it is having its first electronic
upgrade, which means about 150 big long tubes have to be removed from
their stacks, have some electronics removed and then new stuff put
in. The new stuff has fancy lights that flash to tell you what is
going on.

The yellow LED flashes every time a muon is detected by that tube,
the green light is a status light and the red one indicates the pulse
height analysis which is something to tell you that the detector tube
is working properly. It's a bit of a shame, since once the upgrade is
done, nobody will go into the building to look at them unless it
breaks down, but it makes for nice photos. By turning out the lights
and taking a 1-second time-exposure while moving the camera, you can
see the trails left by the flashing lights. By leaving the camera
still for the first 1/2 second, you get to see a bit of the cosmic
ray tube image as well, with the light trails over the top.
Beautiful isn't it?

Jan 25 - The Central Massons

After sleeping in to recover from our big day yesterday, we drove about 20 km south to another mountain range - the Central Massons. It was a roundabout journey, as there are many big crevasses in the ice plateau, so the GPS-routes we travel on are quite wiggly. The clouds show the high winds up at altitude.

After this range of mountains, there is one more, then it is just ice towards the south pole, which is still 2000km away. There was a cold breeze of about 20 knots.

I am wearing more clothes than I ever have before, on top of my thermal underwear and polarfleece jackets & trousers, I have my orange "freezer suit", kind of a one-piece suit made out of some windproof exterior and quilted doona-material on the inside, then a down jacket over the top of that, plus a balaclava, a neck-warmer and a woollen beanie as well. Then my motorbike helmet goes over the top of that. And I have some gloves and heated handlebars. I was just nicely comfy.

Jan 2 - A stroll around Fisher Nunatak

We left Hendo hut about lunchtime and hagged the 4 km south to Fischer nunatak (Lat -67.730° Long 63.054°), named after H J L Fischer, the cook at Mawson in 1958.

We parked the hagg a few hundred metres north of the melt-lake, (about 500 m ASL) then walked over the lake and in a clockwise direction through various multi-levelled lakes until we got inside the enormous wind-scour to the east of the nunatak itself. Once again, examining the ice formations around the rocks formed from multiple freeze/thaw cycles took up a lot of time; it's all novel stuff to people who grew up without ice.

Then we scrambled up a fairly steep rocky wall and pooped out on the top of the nunatak itself, with excellent views of all the Framnes mountain down to Mawson station on the coast. We descended via a scree slope back towards the start of our climb and after a few hours, got back into the hagg and headed for home, just in time to get there for dinner at 6.30.

Jan 01 - A stroll around Mt Henderson

After lunch, Kym, Bob and I headed up to Mt Henderson hut in the yellow Hagg for an afternoon walk about. We parked at first just south of Hendo and walked about the ice formations for an hour or two. The ice pools form interesting patterns near the rocks, where presumably the heat of the sun melts the ice just next to the dark rock, which then refreezes - you can see layers and layers of ice frozen around the edges.

The ice around the edge of the nunataks is cut away - often called 'wind-scours' but really it is due to preferential daytime melting as the sun's heat is absorbed by the dark rocks. There are icicles formed over the edge of these scours, which can be used to play cricket with, or to eat. It's very nice to live in a land of ice, where when you get hot & thirsty (walking about in 5 layers of clothing can make you get hot), you can just reach down and pick up a piece of the ground and eat it.

After a bit we popped up over the rocks and into "Hendo bowl" where you can see upwards to Mt Henderson and the small red hut to the right of it. Which is probably not visible here. After marvelling at the small patches of lichen, which are intriguing here since you rarely see any plant life and just the colours which are not blue white or brown is novel, we walked back to the hagg and then drove up to the hut to stay the night.