Retrograde

southpole ..... January 13, 2011

Later: Deep Fried Macaroni and Cheese Balls
Earlier: Three

Thursday, Jan. 13 2011 12:59 a.m. UTC

Retrograde cargo as seen from the roof of the ICL

I have been here a week and my trip is half over! The trip is actually going quite quickly. One big mercy compared to previous years is that I have slept relatively well, 7 hours of sleep a night which is better than usual for me here.

Went out to the IceCube Lab this morning to show new arrival Mark D. around. From the roof of the ICL one can see orange flags, spread out over 250 acres, indicating the position of each of the 86 IceCube strings. Until you survey the scene that way it is difficult to get an adequate sense of the scale and strangeness of this whole endeavor.

Tomorrow we may already be able to attempt runs with the complete 86-string IceCube detector, which will be a pretty exciting milestone. Other than that there is not too much to report, so I will keep today’s entry brief and catch up with you again tomorrow.

Mark D. and South Pole Telescope/Dark Sector Lab. Note position of IceCube Strings as marked by orange flags.

The author posing as an alien from Planet Earth

Later: Deep Fried Macaroni and Cheese Balls
Earlier: Three