Under the ice and more cryo progress

This week started off with the very important and always somewhat nerve-racking step of moving Theo (our cyrostat) to the gondola from its ground station cart. We are well practiced at this maneuver, but you always have to be on your A game when transporting a cryogenic vessel that’s under vacuum. Happily, this went off without a hitch on Sunday!

Theo mounted on the gondola, along with a bunch of people in hard hats.

After that long day on Sunday, we were told to take Monday off in preparation for the very busy next month that spans from the first helium fill until launch. We took full advantage of the day, starting with a trip to the Obs Tube.

The Obs Tube is a tube situated in the sea ice just down the hill from town. It fits one person, and takes you via ladder down a few meters to a compartment with windows below the ice. I don’t have any more adjectives to describe these sort of incredible experiences I’m having down here, so I guess I’ll just go with how my buddy Romano described it: f—in’ badass. The sea is brimming with life, despite the cold. Tiny white fishes are everywhere moving in slow motion. Little transparent white skeletal looking creatures and tiny jellyfish-looking things make you double take as you realize they are alive. And the coolest part- the sounds of the whales or seals. We imitate them to each other and it sounds like we are making lame sci fi laser gun sounds effects: “Pew pew!” But that’s exactly what it sounds like.

Evaluating the Obs Tube.

Steve descends first.

Since only one person can fit down there at a time, the rest of us hung out in a shelter (called an apple because it is red and round) nearby.

Imagine there are Mario going down a pipe sounds here.

Sean descends.

Me, going down.

Below the sea ice. There were stalactite-looking crystals jutting downward from the surface.

My best effort at capturing a weird transparent white organism swimming around down there.

Fish! You can sort of see the texture of the bottom of the ice. It looked fuzzy.

After that, Ed and I hit the gym to do some climbing. There are three gyms here- the weights gym, the gerbil gym, and the big gym. Here are a couple pictures of the big gym.

The big gym where I have played soccer, volleyball, and- most recently- dodgeball.

Climbing wall at the “Big Gym”.

On the walk home from the gym, we saw this and laughed.

Later on, 12 members of the SPIDER team participated in a dodgeball tournament. It was a lot of fun, despite the two SPIDER teams finishing last.

Joseph is so ready.

Sasha is the only hope for team REDIPS.

Ivan is SO FAST.

Sean does a dance.

The next day, we took the dive and put liquid helium into the main tank. Cooling warm(-ish) thing down to 4 K causes a lot of boil off and high pressures in the tank, so we do it slowly and keep people around for the 72 hours it takes for everything to equilibrate, just to make sure Theo is happy. So far, so good! Tomorrow, we should have superfluid, and within a day or two after that, a fully functioning microwave polarimeter!

Good morning, LDB.

SPIDER has a grand tradition of terrible weather (including a couple of hurricanes) interrupting important operations. On the day of our first helium fill, we saw our first “Condition 2” weather, which thankfully wasn’t enough to keep us from travelling to LDB. You can see from the bent flag here how windy it was though.

Liquid helium has a lot of cooling power. This is the vent from our tank during a fill.

Since Jon, Bill, and I took early shift, we got to watch the Kress come in at 8:15.

Jon does not need a coat to go outside. Jon is from Iceland.

Cooling down and pressure ridge tour

Yesterday we took our next big step toward a functioning experiment- we transferred liquid nitrogen into the main tank of the cryostat. It’s always exciting to get to the cryogens step. Exciting meant only in the sense of happy anticipation, and not at all in the sense of being terrified something will go wrong in an unrecoverable manner, of course. I’ve never been one to worry. In all seriousness, though, 28 hours in and things are looking good.

The daily disembarkation from the Kress to the high bay.

Cold liquid is leaving this nitrogen dewar and going into our cryostat!

Temps going down! (Except for the one that is being heated intentionally.)

I told Sasha to look excited about cooling.

To celebrate the beginning of the nitrogen fill, Ed and Ivan had their arm wrestling match. I think I might have captured the moment when Ed’s tendon got sprained. Arm wrestling is apparently a sort of dangerous game.

While the nitrogen fill was happening, I recorded what I thought was an amusing series of photos. The task at hand was to fill a bucket with water. The bucket is used as a heat sink to warm up the exhaust pipe from the cryostat. This keeps the check valve at the very end from freezing. Since drinking water is a limited resource in Antarctica, we wanted to use non-precious water. Bill suggested snow. Ed and I filled the bucket, brought it inside, and got impatient. It needed to melt faster. Below is the sequence leading to the fulfillment of that goal.

Ed began with a heat gun. He felt useful since he could do this with only his non gimp arm.

Bill shows why he makes the professor big bucks, and replaces human with duct tape and hunk of metal.

Postdoc Jon comes in and doubles the heat. Barth is dubious, since Jon has neglected to turn on one of the heat guns.

Post doc Jon’s next idea is to chisel the chunks into smaller pieces.

Postdoc Jon made a mess with this method.

Postdoc Ziggy sticks an aluminum plate backboard into the ice. Soon, the ice was melted.

Several of us woke up very early this morning to leave on a 4 am tour of the pressure ridges near Scott Base. Pressure ridges form from the sea ice flowing up against the point where Scott base is located. This makes waves in the ice that crack on the crests to make jagged ice structures and on the troughs to create pools filled from the ocean below. The ridges are the most stunning part of Antarctica I have seen to date- well worth the lost sleep.

It was a snowy, windy day, so the photos don’t begin to capture it. In real life, the blue ice stood out sharply against the grey hills toward McMurdo and the white ice everywhere else. I felt like I was on a different planet, or in some artist’s imagination, or in a Dr. Seuss book. Totally unreal, and an experience I will never forget.

Our tour guide, Anne, alerted us to the presence of cracks. They were everywhere in the ridges.

Crack

Stay near the flags! Except the black ones. Black is for death.

Ob Hill. It looked like it was in black and white.

Near the beginning of the trail. Looking toward Scott Base.

Most of my photos of this little tunnel pass through a ridge did not survive the cold. The cold has a weird effect on my camera, wherein I think it takes a picture, but the image file that results is unreadable.

You can see a hole in the pool here, which is where seals pop in and out.

Me, with some sweet ice formations.

At the end of the trip, the hair that had made it out of my mask was frozen. I was channeling Gandalf.

A week of waiting

I haven’t written a post in a week. Reasons for this include a lack of exciting activity, a lack of pictures, and overall melancholy as we have been playing the waiting game, trying our best to get Theo ready for cryogens.

We have hopefully found and fixed the last of our leaks– it is really difficult to get an experiment with that many vacuum flanges to be vacuum tight! The smallest scratch on a surface or tiny piece of schmutz on an o-ring can break your vacuum. Despite our vast collective experience and careful work in closing up, mistakes are made. Thankfully, we have also become very adept at finding and fixing leaks! After today’s leak check, we think we are close to as low of a pressure as we can achieve with no detectable leaks. Hopefully we will decide to fill liquid nitrogen tomorrow, and then the real fun begins! Might have base temperature detectors this time next week! But I am getting ahead of myself.

Here are some pictures from this week. First, wrapping up my vehicles and buildings tour:

The Kress, our usual 7:30 am ride to LDB. The passenger cabin is unheated, and the Kress is very slow, so this is the least comfortable vehicle.

Sasha, Steve, and the famed Ivan the Terrabus.

Jamil on Ivan the Terrabus.

My dorm, affectionately called 208. All buildings are just named by their numbers here. McMurdo isn’t known for its architecture.

The Boss, the vehicle that launches the balloons.

A year and a bit ago when SPIDER was getting integrated in Palestine, TX, a few of us had a memorable night of watching some of the riggers arm wrestle, and then joining in the contest ourselves. That inspired Natalie to organize a SPIDER arm wrestling tournament. We’ve been doing matches after lunch in the galley, and they have been a nice light-hearted break from work. Below, Ivan (undefeated) was teaching Johanna technique, and Sean was her guinea pig.

Ivan starts Sean and Johanna. The battle of Cleveland.

Johanna put up a good fight, but Sean had all the leverage.

Today we arrived at LDB to find a seal in our backyard! It’s a long ways to the nearest water, so we are curious how he got there. He quickly scooted his way across and out of LDB, happily heading in the correct direction toward water.

LDB seal! Where did you come from, little guy?

Seal heads across LDB.

Seal waddling out of LDB.

I’ll close with a picture of Erebus because it looks cool every day and I only take a picture every other day, but that’s still a lot of pictures, so I have to post one.

Erebus often has its own clouds. Here, there is a strip of them, so you can see the top and bottom.

Closing up timelapse

Jon set up some go pros around the high bay to take pictures every 10 seconds while we were closing up. The result is pretty sweet. You can see the various layers going on the cryostat, and the domes being closed up. I wore red for a couple consecutive days, so I’m easy to pick out!

On the pump!

Wow, what progress can be made in a week! We have gone from unpacking to on the pump in one week- a new record for the SPIDER team. Being on the pump is a big milestone for us because pumping all of the gas out of our cryostat takes a fixed amount of time, and no amount of will power or hard work can make it go any faster. Therefore, we use up all of our will power and work ethic in the time leading up to that stage and then relax just a little bit while the pump does the work for us once we’re all closed up.

We finished buttoning Theo up and started pumping a couple hours ago, and now Ed and I are monitoring it over night. We have to be very careful with the speed at which we pump down the cryostat, since we have very thin filters that can tear if they are subject to a big pressure differential. They are kind of like thin balloons- we don’t want them to pop. So we slowly open a needle valve bit by bit until sometime early tomorrow when we’ll have only a small fraction of an atmosphere left in there. We’ll repressurize with nitrogen a few times (this, in theory, helps dislodge water molecules that adhere to the surfaces inside the cryostat) and then leak check the system.

While we twiddle our thumbs (and occasionally the needle valve), I figured I would post some pictures. First of work done over the past few days, and then of the environment here at LDB, since I have heard a request for shots of buildings. I haven’t spent a lot of time in town lately, but I’ll take pictures of those buildings soon!

Loading up a telescope, ready for insertion into the cryostat.

Telescope coming up the tube.

All inserts installed! From the back.

Sean tapes up some seams at the front of Theo. With six telescopes inserted, we’re in business!

Johanna and John inspect waveplates. These are single crystal sapphire plates that rotate the polarization of the light that enters our telescopes. By turning them, we can change which polarization of light our detectors see.

Ed spent a long day taping baffles around filter stacks. This has been a lot of the sort of work we’ve been doing in the assembly stage of the experiment.

Sasha performs delicate MLI (multi-layer insulation) configuring. We got new MLI for this run, and needed to customize it with holes and slots where feature in our system go. It was just a little bit of a reach to do all that…

You know something has gone wrong when the PI (my advisor, Bill) has his head in the cryostat. Here, he is soldering a connector that we broke during assembly.

Cynthia tapes up a baffle around the final filter stack.

VCS2 (the outermost vapor-cooled shield) is finished being installed with filter stacks.

Many layers of aluminized mylar blanket the two vapor-cooled shields to insulate them from the warmer parts on their exteriors. Here, the last of the MLI is installed. This is my favorite stage of the assembly, since it is the shiniest stage.

Bottom dome installation.

ON THE PUMP!

Ed tightens some screws on the top of the cryostat as we begin the pumpdown.

To get to and from LDB, there are a variety of vehicular options. Most mornings, we take the Cress, but I don’t have a picture of that just now. It’s basically a semi whose trailer is a big passenger compartment. It is cold and slow and I don’t like it all that much. On Sundays, when the number of people heading to LDB is drastically reduced, we take these awesome vehicles called deltas. Those are the first ones pictured below. They are nice because you can see out the windows, sit across from each other, and are reasonably fast. My most common means of transport (and also the least cool) is shuttle van, shown in the last photo. It is just a big van with big tires.

Deltas, my favorite mode of transportation.

Bill and Jon in the delta.

Ziggy and Cynthia in the delta.

Stickers in the delta.

The shuttle van, which is often what takes us home at the end of the day.

Today I walked around and took some pictures around LDB.

It was a very foggy day in the mountains. Here, a flag past which you can’t go or else risk falling in a crevasse, and a very faint Mt. Erebus.

It’s important to stay organized with this big of an experiment.

The three payload buildings. The tent on the left was just completed, and is where COSI will be assembled. ANITA has the next high bay, and we have the one to the right of that.

Rigging and telemetry buildings.

The galley is just a long arched tent, more or less.

Sunday is most people’s day off in McMurdo. This includes the LDB chef. So this Sunday, the LDB site coordinator, Dave, cooked us lunch. This was his menu.

The galley, which is packed at lunch time, but not on Sundays at dinner time.

Menus are posted on white boards. So far, the food has been fantastic.

Very soon we will know if we have managed to make our system helium leak tight. This is a very difficult thing to do, and we have failed numerous times in the past, so send some positive thoughts our way!

Finally getting to work!

My mom sent me an email today saying that she figured we must be busy since neither my collaborators nor I have updated our blogs recently. Indeed, she was correct! We have been working overtime to make up for the schedule delays now that our cargo is here, and a ton of progress has been made in a few short days. Our last night off was Halloween, and a few of us managed to put together costumes. Mine consisted of long underwear, belts, and a pair of leggings tied around my head.

Three of the SPIDER crew dressed up for Halloween: me as a ninja, Steve as a fancy SPIDER, and Bill as Commondante Marcos (if you knew who Bill was dressed as, he bought you a beer. Bill didn’t have to buy many people beers.)

The next day, Saturday, we received the first half of our cargo. With ten people, unpacking wasn’t too bad, and we were done and waiting on the second half of our stuff by early afternoon. We found ways to pass the time.

Mount Erebus in partial cloud cover and CARGO. We were so excited when new sea containers arrived.

While waiting for more cargo, we broke in our custom made SPIDER cornhole boards.

Lorenzo and Steve went undefeated on the day.

Unfortunately, the rest of our stuff didn’t show up until the next day, but with that long of a wait, we were all bursting with energy ready to get to work. In the three days we’ve had since getting unpacked, we’ve opened up the cryostat and each of the six telescopes, carefully inspected each, and reassembled and closed them up to the point where we will put them in the cryostat tomorrow. This is a lot of careful work, and while we are well practiced at it by this point, we have still had some long days at the high bay. Here’s a tour of where we’ve been spending our time:

The mezzanine, where each of us has some desk space.

Science is powered by coffee.

Insert land. Pictured here are the lower halves of the six telescopes. The optics trusses have been removed so that we can inspect the focal planes beneath.

One of SPIDER’s 6 focal planes. We treat these like our babies as they were painstakingly custom built and tested to be the most instantaneously sensitive cameras that will have looked at the CMB to date.

Looking from insert land into the larger high bay. You can see the bottom of the cryostat into which six telescopes are inserted.

Looking from the high bay doors toward the rest of the high bay and mezzanine. Certain individuals hung flags to proclaim their allegiances.

Apart from finally getting to prepare our experiment for flight, which is exciting enough in itself, I am still awed every day to be in Antarctica. Every day I step outside for a break or to go home, there’s some new cool lighting, some new cool clouds, or my favorite new phenomenon here: Fata Morgana. It’s like a mirage you’re used to seeing when driving on a highway. There is a temperature gradient between the hot road and cooler air above it, and that caused light to refract in such a way that you see the sky on the road. Here, it’s the opposite. You have cold ice, and warm air above it, and when the conditions are right, that causes features to look extended. Jamil has a fantastic photo of it here. I see this everywhere, to different degrees at different times. It makes you constantly question whether what you’re seeing is real or in illusion. Antarctica is such a strange place.

A nice part of working late is getting to see the sun in all different parts of the sky. The clouds here keep the views dynamic and new each time you step outside.

The moon over Mt. Erebus.

A poor picture of a Fata Morgana. You can see what looks like kind of a cliff against Black Island. The illusion is really trippy and ubiquitous here.

In addition to the landscape, Antarctica also poses some unique… problems? Minor inconveniences? Things happen on a daily basis that you just wouldn’t expect to happen anywhere else. To close, here are a couple expamples from the past couple of days:

#AntarcticaProblems: You’re on a shuttle home at 10:30 at night, and happen upon a very unfortunate tractor driver who almost slid off a cliff. We walked around him to a shuttle on the other side while he sat in the cabin with his foot on the break and smiled about his unfortunate situation and waited for the helper crew to arrive.

#AntarcticaProblems: The generators for LDB had to be taken down for upgrades for an hour, so we powered a disco ball off a UPS and hung out in the dark.

Looking forward to the surprises that we’ll meet in the coming weeks. Let’s all cross our fingers that they are not cryogenic in nature…

LDB, Scott Base, and Observation Hill

So far, this trip has been a lot of waiting. Waiting a week in Christchurch while bad weather kept us from getting to the Ice, and now, waiting for planes to get fixed so that our cargo can arrive and we can get to work. We have had four days in Antarctica now, and each day has increased our nervousness about schedule. Our cargo was slated to be here 13 days ago, and with an experiment as big as ours, every day to get it ready to fly counts. Crossing our fingers now that it will arrive very early tomorrow, and we can start to make tangible progress!

We have made some progress over the last couple of days. The Princeton team headed out to LDB (Long Duration Ballooning) for the first time, and got our cryostat into the high bay and uncrated. LDB is kind of out in the middle of nowhere- a 30 minute ride in a van from McMurdo. This is a bit of a painful commute (the roads are very bumpy), but once you’re out there, the scenery is fantastic. We’re near Mt. Erebus, the southernmost active volcano. You can see the smoke coming out of the top of it.

Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano. This is the view from LDB, where we will be working. Distance estimation is impossible here. The base of that mountain is 25 miles from LDB. I guessed a mile. I would have died if I were an Antarctic explorer in old times.

Sasha with the high bays at LDB.

Our cryostat, Theo, is delivered to the high bay.

Inside the high bay, starting to uncrate.

With Theo uncrated, there was little else to do with our tools still in New Zealand. Yesterday, we watched game 7 of the World Series, played games, and then went to America night at Scott Base. It’s the one night a week the Kiwis let us into their bar.

Every Thursday night is America night at Scott Base, the New Zealand base. It’s the only time Kiwis let us into their bar. Here are Johanna, Sasha, Lorenzo, and Erik, a fire fighter we met. He is way cooler than us.

There are sweet ice formations at Scott Base. The color doesn’t show up well here, but there is blue ice here.

The bars at McMurdo are solid as well. Gallagher’s is a nice big place, with air hockey and fooseball. Southern Exposure is smaller, with a nice pool table, shuffleboard, and fooseball. If you know me, you know where I’m spending a lot of my free time here… Can’t let my pool skills get rusty!

Today, some of us went for a hike up Observation Hill, right next to McMurdo. It was a steep climb up in snow, but the view was well worth it.

Town as seen from the top of Observation (Ob) Hill.

Mt. Erebus from the top of Ob Hill

Lorenzo and me, with Mt. Erebus in the background.

It is so bright here. I was trying to take a picture of Willy Field and LDB. Willy Field is an air field, and is the cluster of buildings near the center. LDB, where we work, are the little specs on the left.

Looking out at Scott Base.

This cross memorializes the members of Scott’s team who died on their way back from the South Pole.

The easiest way back down was also the most fun way back down. Lorenzo almost barreled into Natalie.

Steve sliding down.

My advisor, Bill, is too dignified to slide down the hill.

Tonight is the Halloween Party, and then tomorrow we finally get to start working!

Finally in Antarctica!

After a week of weather delays, we finally arrived in Antarctica yesterday. Even after the anticipation of working on SPIDER for three years and the year delay after the government shutdown and our final delay in Christchurch, my excitement was not disappointed. This place exceeds all expectations. I have been saying WOW a lot the past couple of days. It is unreal- like a different world. I feel so lucky to be able to see it. I hope my pictures and descriptions can do it some small amount of justice!

Our day started yesterday with a 5:30 am shuttle to the airport. We boarded a C17 at around 8:30, and were in the air a bit after 9. It was a five and a half hour flight to the Ice. Very noisy, but with ear plugs not so bad. Certainly a unique flying experience!

Me in the C17. Ready to finally go to the Ice!

First view of Antarctica from the plane.

So excited to be here!

Steve, Ed, and our ride

After arriving on the Ice, it was an hour shuttle ride to town. There we started our long list of orientation, safety, and training info sessions. We beat almost all of our cargo down here, so for now, there is very little work we can do on SPIDER. This has given us an opportunity to explore and get situated before we become incredibly busy. Happily, 7 more members of our team arrived this morning, so we are all getting adjusted and adventuring together.

The view out from town

With the sign

The first thing to do when you get to McMurdo is to go see the IT people so you can connect to the network.

After getting the newcomers moved in and settled, some of us went on a little hike out to Hut Point. It provided some really scenic views and brought us near our first wildlife: seals!

It is about 14 F here in McMurdo, -3 with windchill. But I was sweating on our hike. ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear is very good stuff indeed. We were all decked out in our Big Reds and ski pants, except Jon, who opted for his fancy pants Icelandic brand stuff.

Discovery Hut. This was first built in 1902! (Obviously, it has been restored/upgraded a bit)

Looking back toward town and Observation Hill The ice inbetween us and town will be a harbor come February. Ships come in and dock at McMurdo.

Here I was just trying to capture how windy it was. That didn’t really work.

Our hiking troop. Sasha, Steve, Lorenzo, Johanna, and Jon.

Looking out at what will in a few months be the ocean.

Me and the vastness of Antarctica.

Jumping is a tradition of mine.

The ice was this fluorescent blue color in some places. It did not look real.

Seals!

And to end, here is a group shot from Steve.

Steve’s tripod picture of the first 10 SPIDERers. We made it!

Weather delays

Several people have messaged me lately asking for updates on how things are in Antarctica, so I thought I should make a quick post clarifying: We are still in Christchurch. We have now been delayed four days due to bad weather in McMurdo. It’s impossible to say when we will get to go. But I will certainly post pictures and an update when we get there. For now, here are a couple pictures of the cheese monger where we bought a big wheel of cheese to bring to Antarctica. It was a magical place.

A shelf of aging cheese. The top shelf haven’t grown rinds yet. We got ours from the fifth shelf down.

Ed and so much cheese.

Bonus day in New Zealand

The weather in McMurdo was bad today, so we got a call at 4:30 in the morning informing us that we were delayed 24 hours. Since it was a really nice day in Christchurch, this gave us the opportunity to do some more exploring. Today, we left the city and took to the hills for a hike. We took the Bridle Path up and over a hill to Lyttelton, a little port town. It was a short hike, but afforded us a breathtaking view, one which I’m sorry to say was impossible to capture with a camera. But I sure did try. I am sure Ed and Steve will have a good set too, what with their fancy cameras and photography skills.

Steve and Ed on our way up

The reward at the top. The colors were amazing. This is a poor representation of the view, but it’s the best I could do.

Making an effort to post pictures with me in them too.

New Zealand is very green.

Scenic lookout point

Hiking around the top

There were yellow flowers all over the hill

The Pacific is barely visible in this picture.

Ed being super pumped about the view

The view of the other side of the hill, showing Christchurch and mountains in the distance.

The beach and barely visible mountains

Top of the hill

There are sheep everywhere here.

Ending our hike with a beer at a neat little place called Wunderbar in Lyttelton. Bar tenders in NZ are so nice. Actually, everyone in NZ has been super friendly.