Dr. John Cassano of Colorado University’s Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

December 30th, 2007 andrea

One thing I’ve learned about doing a project down here is that you have to take advantage of every opportunity to meet with the scientists because they often are only here for a short time. This requires you to be ready in a moment’s notice. Case in point, Dr. John Cassano arrived two days ago and will probably be leaving next week. I found out John was here this afternoon, and within two hours, met and conducted a fascinating two-camera video interview with him.

John and Dr. Matt Lazzara of the University of Wisconsin lead a team who are here to maintain, update and add to the 70 Automatic Weather Stations in Antarctica and to analyze and update the models being used for weather prediction by aviation meteorology.

It turns out that John is also a storm chaser, chasing tornadoes in the Midwest, so it was really great to get a scientist’s perspective on the importance of experiencing these phenomena physically and not only through weather instruments.

Here is a link to the real-time Antarctic Automatic Weather Station data online. I hope to accompany Shelley Knuth, a member of John’s team, out to a few of the station sites soon:
http://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/realaws.html

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Sound Walkabout

December 27th, 2007 andrea

Tonight in preparation for the Sonic Antarctica Concert on January 7th, Tia and I hosted a phonography workshop/soundwalk around McMurdo. We brought a variety of microphones and recording devices for people to experiment with and visited a wide range of sound environments, from the waste-water treatment plant to radarsat (aka the golf-ball – thanks to Nik Sinkola for opening it up for us!)

It seems to me that McMurdo residents have a high sensitivity to sound, in part I think because listening (radio communications, heavy machinery and vehicles, helicopters, etc.) is such an important part of living down here. You can see more photos of the walkabout by clicking on the thumbnail in this post.

This is a recording by Dr. John Mitchell from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics. An accomplished photographer, Dr. Mitchell is trying out the mp3 recorder and binaural microphone for the first time, you can hear the two of us talking briefly at the end of the recording:

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Screamin’ Mad Balloon

December 26th, 2007 andrea

Filling up the balloon was loud. Painfully, mind-numbingly, and gloriously, worth-staying-up-all-night-loud. And, despite my default all-access pass, I still got a little too up close and personal. In this recording of the beginning of the inflation, you can hear me walking right up to the balloon and (sigh), being asked to step back.
Luckily, it got a lot louder. Here’s a short sample. The recording is binaural and has some nice spatialized effects. Unfortunately, I don’t think that even binaurals can effectively reproduce the massive height of the sound when it is experienced in person.

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Early Morning Long Duration Balloon Launch

December 26th, 2007 andrea

Yesterday was my last chance to view a Long Duration Balloon launch at Wilie Field. Two launches had already happened while I was at the pole and in the Dry Valleys, so I was especially hoping to see this last one. An attempt at launching the ATIC payload was planned for 8PM last night (see http://www.nsbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice0708.htm for more details on all three experiments).

However, due to weather conditions, which need to be perfect, the balloon didn’t launch until 3AM. I stuck it out and the overcast weather and late hour gave me the benefit of being one of only two observers, and lots of access to recording. The entire experience was a blast. There was lots of time to joke around with the launch crew, and talk with the meteorology group (including Anne Dalvera who was sending up pibals – short for ‘pilot balloons’ – every half-hour) and the physicists running the experiments.

The following recordings are all binaural (yup, headphones!) and are only about 2 or 3 minutes max. First is a recording of downtime in the LDB galley. In it you can hear the voice of Kevin Yuill on the radio giving his weather observation report from the tower:

Phil Austin shown here was coordinating the entire production and generously spent time taking me through the process. Here is a recording of Phil right before the launch explaining what will happen:

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Geochemists Sarah Fortner and LeeAnn Munk

December 23rd, 2007 andrea

Here’s a photo of geochemists LeeAnn Munk and Sarah Fortner relaxing at Lake Hoare before they head out to the field to perform two 24-hour glacial stream sampling experiments at nearby sites. During the field work, they take samples every hour for a 24 hour period, then come back to the chem lab at camp and do some preliminary processing. The samples are then sent back to Crary for more extensive labs. Both scientists are keeping blogs of their research.
LeeAnn: http://www.leeannmunk.blogspot.com/
Sarah: http://www.sarahfortner.blogspot.com/

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