Snow, sky and outer space
The view walking back into the dome just after sunset...
The snow would find its way through every crevice in the arch. Eventually we had this sculpture just inside the front door (at left, biomed arch is on right)
At one point during my time at Pole in the 1980's one of the science community claimed he had a scheme to recover Amundsen's tent using ground penetrating radar, combined with accurate data on the movement of the glacier and the snow accumulation since 1911. The plan was to take the tent back to Norway for a museum. Well, since Amundsen somehow neglected to bring a GPS with him, I think that might have been a bit difficult. I never heard another word about it while on the ice. HOWEVER... a few years later the Norwegian glaciologist Monica Kristensen, who led one of the first NGO expeditions to Pole (from the Bay of Whales in 1986-87, they turned around 280 miles short) came looking for it. She led the "Aurora Challenge" expedition from the Patriot Hills side in 1993-94, they really expected to retrieve Amundsen's tent and flag and take them back to display at the Lillehammer Winter Games in 1994. That never worked; team member Jostein Helgested died from a fall into a 120' crevasse. The SAR effort was staged through Pole. SAR team member Steve Dunbar tells a harrowing story of the landing and his descent into the crevasse. Meanwhile Amundsen's tent remains where he left it...
Aurora shot from near clean air looking toward the fuel arch and station. My normal method was to use 400 film with a wide-angle lens, and tripod and cable release. I'd open the lens up and hold the shutter open for 45-60 seconds. Others have done more sophisticated things with heated camera boxes etc., and of course there is the art of shooting the sky through the domes in the skylab. On one of my pictures the camera froze with the lens stuck open. I put the lens cover on and brought the camera inside to thaw out. About 45 minutes later I tapped the camera and the shutter clicked shut. Here's that picture.
The cosmic ray detectors behind skylab are illuminated by auroras, moonlight, and, well, some camera static electricity. The satellite tracking antenna (SATTRACK) is to the right of the moon.
This is my only 76-77 picture of these 3 big red boxes which got installed during our summer. They consisted of detector tubes encased in lead shielding. The principal investigator for the cosmic ray studies was Dr. Martin Pomerantz who showed up to commission our cosray lab on the second floor of skylab. Earlier in the summer Stu ran the old cosray lab at old pole for several days to collect baseline data for the new system; those detector tubes were simpler and smaller and buried in a pile of lead bricks (a few of which may still be around the station here and there). Oh yes, the cosray detectors were on a platform which was jacked up (similar to CAF) while I was around in the late 80's, and at least once since then. Below left is the skylab under a full moon (1978 Kevin Bisset photo), with the light on in the second floor cosray lab.
Dr. Pomerantz was involved with cosmic ray studies at McMurdo and Pole since 1966; an early bit of his historical trivia is that the original cosray lab at McM was built and set up before Dr. Pomerantz found out that there was to be a nuclear plant which of course would mess up the data. That's why the later McM cosray lab was built on the Pass road so that Ob Hill would shield it from the radiation. The original McMurdo cosray lab was later shipped to Old Pole--that was the one we dug out during the summer. A few years after our winter he branched into astronomical studies at Pole. Some of his earlier astronomical work was done in "Pomerantz Land" during summers in the late 80's using temporary structures. Since those studies proved successful, nowadays there is the dark sector, a bunch of telescopes, and the permanent "MAPO" (Martin A. Pomerantz Observatory) building named in his honor.
