Winter Over Blog #5 2016

Scott Base has said goodbye to the sun but the precursor to the darkness was sunrise and sunsets. There are not many places you can leave for a walk at sunrise return at sunset and have only been out for an hour.
By the way sorry about the blog 5 delay- writers block, trying to sort out which pictures to show and holding out for a good picture of auroras (sorry but missing the expertise, tripod and a better camera to fulfil the latter awesome aurora pic at the moment).
One of the Scott Base regulars who is in the process of making his second Antarctica DVD has the gear and the expertise. So you will need to scour around the Antarctica NZ Facebook site (www.facebook.com/Antarctica.New.Zealand) to see really his good aurora shots.
But in the interim, here’s a pic of myself during one of several early morning forays into the outdoors and waiting for that magic photo before the Go Pro battery freezes or I freeze (whichever comes first). Auroras are fickle you need to be outside at the right time and looking in the right direction they don’t just hang around all night and can be very fleeting. Recently some of the others on the base got some awesome shots but every time I went out they had died down and almost seem to wait until I got too cold and went inside before reappearing.
Here’s the “did you know” bit. Figured should know what I am looking at. So auroras result from emissions of photons in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, 80kms up. Auroras occur where particles from the solar wind follow the earth’s magnetic field lines to the geomagnetic pole. The Oxygen emissions appear green or orange-red. Nitrogen emissions appear blue or red. So there you go.
As the lens on today’s cameras tend to be better than the average human eye lens generally the pictures you do take tend to be more vivid than what you actually see.
But the when you are outside and skyward looking you do see the occasional meteor flash past and of course I have a chat to Rangi and get his opinion on life and try and get some feedback on when the next auroras are due to show. He is pretty mute on the subject.
And the moon is hard to miss as it circles around most of the time. I hadn’t reflected on that before but of course at this time of the year it is circling around 24hrs /day. Especially at full moon I see it gliding past my westward facing bedroom window in the “evening” moving from direction of Mt Erebus towards the south and then moving it way back during the “day” along the eastern windows from south to north again.
With the sun scarpering off to the northern hemisphere the camera and mindset moves to looking at the minute stuff instead of the vast expanses.
So it’s the patterns that are visible in the frozen sea ice , the ice crystals on the window, and the formations on the wires, handrails that attract the eye.
This week was a great time to reflect on the exclusivity of Antarctica because on 19th of May over 200 climbers walked up Everest; the levels of co2 in the atmosphere have reached what experts regard and unrecoverable levels. An increasing number of research people want come down to Antarctica to study climate change. This in itself will require increased fuel to fly and operate down here, increased services, infrastructure and impact.
I am just one insignificant person, whose curiousity led me to working at Scott Base.I don’t exclude myself from asking the question should I have come, what is my impact . I hear the generators going 24hrs a day consuming significant amounts of fossil fuels just to keep the Scott Base going so that it is ready in summer for the hoards to come and investigate many things, including climate change. Just wonder how many see the irony of the situation or does the “BIDATM” (But it doesn’t apply to me) philosophy kick in .
Not sure about the topic for the next blog. Time to lighten up may be an provide a bit of a candid peak at what people do down here, work wise and leisure time wise.
horror mini golf anyone?




