The South Pole

From 2008-2009, I spent a year living at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. Working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) I took measurements of the "Cleanest Air on Earth" and launched high altitude balloons in to the stratosphere to measure the annual formation of the Ozone Hole.

The "Ice Flight" from Christchurch, New Zealand across the Southern Ocean to McMurdo is operated by the US Air National Guard and takes between 5-8 hours depending on aircraft. McMurdo is the base of operations on the continent and a hive of activity during the summer.

Nearby Mount Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on Earth and the second tallest volcano in Antarctica rising out of the ocean to a height of 12,448 feet.

A final three hour flight across the Transantarctic Mountains on a C-130 Hercules outfitted with skis brings you to the bottom of the world and the site of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is first and foremost a science research station. The short summer season is a rush of activity, with science teams coming and going and regular flights bringing mail and even fresh food. Located at over 9,000 feet on top of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and thousands of miles from the nearest human activity, the South Pole is an ideal location for many fields of research.

Located at the South Pole, the Sun is visible continuously for six months resulting in one long "day", and one equally long "night".

The South Pole has been permanently occupied since 1956 with the first station built by the Navy. It has undergone several upgrades with construction of the Dome in 1975, followed by the Elevated Station in 2003. The main building houses operations, science, medical, a greenhouse, theater, game room, the galley, berthing rooms, and a gymnasium.

The South Pole Telescope is a 10-meter diameter telescope built to explore dark energy by measuring the interaction between distant galaxy clusters and the cosmic microwave background. The South Pole is also home to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Construction of IceCube began in 2005 and was completed in 2010, making it the largest neutrino detector on the planet. Using a hot water drill to reach depths exceeding 2,400 meters, 85 "strings" of detector modules were lowered down and frozen in to the ice in a giant grid in order to detect neutrinos originating from outside the solar system.

The Atmospheric Research Observatory

The South Pole is also the location of NOAA's Atmospheric Research Observatory. Positioned to capture the cleanest air on Earth, ARO is placed upwind of the station in the Clean Air Sector where steady winds bring air that hasn't seen human activity for thousands of miles.

Flasks are filled with air for sampling back in Boulder while other instruments continuously measure the background concentrations of a multitude of gases. Balloons are also launched to over 100,000 feet with instruments that measure the health of the ozone layer in the stratosphere and the annual formation of the Antarctic Ozone Hole.

Sastrugi

Though sitting on nearly two miles of compacted snow and ice, the South Pole is actually located in the center of the largest desert on Earth. The South Pole receives only a couple of inches of precipitation per year as extremely fine "diamond dust" ice crystals.

Though little new snow falls, wind causes massive drifts to build around anything sitting on the surface and buildings need to be raised up on stilts. The ice crystals also form in to drifts called sastrugi that form a variety of shapes and can become exhausting to travel across by foot.

Goodbye Summer

Once we said our goodbyes and that final airplane disappeared over the horizon, my crew of 43 people settled in for the next nine months. I look back fondly on my time there: I made a few lifelong friends, the majority of the crew got along quite well, I learned to appreciate excellent board games, read lots of books, and spent countless hours under a pristine and glorious sky.

The Longest Sunset

Over a period of 24 hours, the small disk of the Sun proceeded to transit the horizon on its way to setting for the one and only time that year. Once the final filament fell below the horizon, the 43 people on station did not see the Sun again for 6 months.

Once the Sun set, time seemed to shift to another scale. Without sunlight to signal the passing of time, it was instead a dark sky filled with the brilliant swath of the Milky Way and glorious aurora. Continue my year-long journey through 6 months of night. The South Pole Night