21 December, 2000

I have said a lot about the FPH instrument. I have decided that it might be a good idea to provide a few examples of the data that is produced by the devices. This first image is from Dec. 7th and 8th. The blue is used to indicate the air temperature at both 178.8 meters and 453.3 meters. We had originally felt that the FPH boxes were located at 250 and 500 meters until the electricians said that they just approximated the distance on the horizontal path based on how much wire was on the reel.

The red data is for the Frost Point (FP of the FPH) temperature is located at the two distances. If the frost point temp is higher than the air temp as occurred toward the end of this data set then the air is "supersaturated" and it is either foggy or snowing. This data on the 11th of Dec. is very helpful because it actually can tell us when the weather changed because the x axis is time in GMT which is 13 hours behind us here at the Pole. GMT would only should only be 12 hours behind us since we are on New Zealand time. But wouldn't you know it New Zealand has "Daylight Savings Time" like we do back in the states during the summer.

A few days ago I had the opportunity to climb to the top of the Clean Air Tower. Form the top, 75 feet up you can see for miles and miles on a clear day. Today is not as clear as it was when I took these images. It is far warmer today at only -16 F, but it is overcast. Not the way to spend the first day of summer.

In this image you can see the "Dark Sector". Luke, you can not resist the force of the Dark Sector! The Dark Sector is where all the Astronomy is being conducted. Here it is mostly radio telescopes that are used since during the summer it is daylight all the time. Several of the instruments are looking at the birth of our galaxy, or at least the residual radio signals from the birth. The other TEA who is here at South Pole, Karina, is working on one of these projects.

Here is a view of our humble habitat from the top of the tower. It will be nice to have our new building. I am hopeful that I will be here to see it go up.