SoLaR EcLiPsE...

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and the earth, potentially blocking out all sunlight and throwing parts of the earth into midday darkness. A partial solar eclipse occurred here in Antarctica just last week. The eclipse that we saw had 80% coverage, so the sun was not completely behind the moon. In America when partial eclipses occur you can look at the sun with special lenses or OMSI glasses and still observe the moon slowly creeping along in front of the sun. Depending on where you are and the percentage of the sun that is blocked, it may even still look like the sky is darkening.





The eclipse that we saw was very interesting. All of the scientists in Crary Lab went outside at around 4:20 in the afternoon and looked up at the sun with goggles and camera lenses as eye protection. (Remember that because we are so far south the sun was still very high in the sky, at 4pm the sun looks like it does at 11am in the States!)



Even though the eclipse was not total the sky did darken slightly, it looked like dusk was coming on, which after having the last month of 24 hour sunlight was quite a lot! But because there is so much snow and ice covering the ground in Antarctica the little sun that did shine through got reflected off the white ground and scarttered across McMurdo so that it still seemed bright to us.



Keep in mind that these pictures show the sun in a darkened sky because that is the only way the camera will produce a shot.

Question and Answer:

The Life of Science: The life of science is very different from ordinary life. Upon entering into this life one realizes the interdependence of the experiments and the experimenter. One cannot survive without the other, and therefore the good scientist makes sacrifices for their science.

1) What is your daily schedule like? Our schedules are based on the schedule of our experiments. While out in the field for example we will wake up at 4am. Then by 5am we will be sampling on the lakes, this will take around 2 hours and then the samples will be processed for the following 24 hours (this starts at 7:30 and ends the next morning at 7:30). So when you put your new samples in you retrieve yesterday’s samples and analyze them in the lab. Remember we are studying: salt (NaCl), bubble air (CO2 and O2), chlorophyll a (photosynthesis), bacteria (extremophiles) and the overall composition of the water sample. So that should take us into the night. Our group will have it worked out so that the three people who get up early go to bed a little earlier. Then the other two people will stay up until midnight running the samples until they are done.

2) What are you doing right now? Right now I am stationed at McMurdo still. This is the main lab station for all of the research done in this part of Antarctica (the other three stations are: South Pole, Palmer-in the peninsula, and Scott Base-which is a Kiwi only group). My job right now is to prepare for all of the bacteria runs that we will be doing out in the field. I am washing and labeling bottles, preparing gels for the bacteria to be grown on, and organizing for our flight to the dry valleys. Some members of my group have left for the dry valleys already, so right now I am in charge of all the preparations, which includes getting all of the needed food ready for flight. I should be headed toward Lake Bonney in one weeks time (weather dependent of course).












When I am lucky I get to go on hikes, the picture shown is from a recent hike to Castle Rock and after getting there I climbed up it (around 1,000 feet).

I am also working with another researcher here at McMurdo. We are looking at stream water (which flows into the lakes I will be studying). We are sampling the water and testing the amount of sediment that is suspended in it. The ecosystem here in the Dry Valleys is very co-dependent on all the variables. The glaciers melt into the streams which then flow into the lakes. This glacial flow represents the only nutrients that the lakes will be receiving all year, so it is all very important!

3) Is it colder then you expected? Right now it is still summer here in Antarctica, and the summer is much warmer then I expected. On a daily bases I am wearing jeans and a long sleeve shirt. When you go on hikes up Ob Hill for instance, then it gets a little colder and you want to have a parka and long underwear on, but for the most part it is warm here. By warm I mean around 20-25 degrees F. It will get much colder soon however, when winter comes in mid February the sun will go down and the temperature will drop significantly.

4) The animals that we see around McMurdo are Skuas (shown right, it feeds on krill and fish), seals (we are currently right on the sound so we can see the sea ice where the seals constantly break through and lay around on the ice) and, if you are lucky, Penguins! Penguins move around a lot so it is really hard to catch them around the sound. The last sighting of Penguins was around a week ago at 3am... I missed that one.

5) Will you see Penguins in the Dry Valleys? Hopefully not. The Dry Valleys are, remember, a desert. There is no liquid water there and no mammals besides humans can survive there. In short, like any desert, the poor animals (including humans) who are unlucky enough to get lost in the Dry Valleys, end up dying there. So the only penguins and seals I will find will be mummified specimens. (Which I will not touch or disturb because it is not a part of my research project and it is therefore prohibited.)

6) Do you like it in Antarctica? YES! I love it here, the people are amazing, the research is really interesting and life is really exciting. It is a hard life to get used to and it is important to make time to relax. Research is a full time job so we all have to work hard to make sure that we are stopping for the day eventually. We also have to make sure that we are going to sleep. No matter how awake you feel at midnight when the sun is still high in the sky and the air is cold on your face, you need to remind yourself that tomorrow will be just as beautiful, and you need your sleep. Also because we are in such a tight community lots of people are currently coming down with the flu. So we have to be really careful that we don't get sick. Sickness out in the field is horrible, and sickness here in McMurdo is not much better.

7) What do you eat? Unlike past explorers who had to resort to eating seal meat and their dogs to stave off scurvy, we are lucky here at McMurdo and there is never a shortage of food! Much of our food is flown in from New Zealand (or even brought in by ships like the Oden shown right), so our food is really good and fresh (mostly, out in the field it will be frozen and/or dried). However, when the flights are delayed it affects the food too. Also we have our own green house here, something I wasn't expecting. All of our fresh veggies are grown right here in Antarctica; of course we are very careful that no seeds or pollen escapes the green house area because that would contaminate this pristine environment.

8) When I head out to the Dry Valleys (in one week) I will stay there for around 5 days, then return to McMurdo to prepare for the next trip and investigate what we found on this current trip. Starting in February my group will begin to stay in the valleys for a month at a time and then return to McMurdo for a week. McMurdo itself shuts down in mid February because most people leave. My group of 14 scientists is the first one ever to stay in the dry valleys during the extended season until April 17.

On the ICE

Day One: Jan 4, 2008 (NZ time)
A loud crack sounded over the intercom and heads all around me snapped up from books and papers as 70 sets of eyes found their ways to the window of the cockpit. “Uhh,” my heart raced, I wondered if the plane was about to boomerang, “Uhh, we’re going to circle until the fire station clears the runway…there’s a penguin out there.”

Smiles cracked all around me, even the old timers who have been to the ice 15 or more seasons laughed, this is what happens here, in this strange new place. That is not to say that getting to McMurdo was a synch, the base is 9,500 miles from Portland and planes are often forced to return or boomerang back to New Zealand due to harsh weather (one group had 7 such boomerangs before eventually landing on the ice), so I was relieved and ecstatic.
I am not sure what to say about my first step off the plane. For the thirty minute bus ride to the base I didn’t say anything at all, the snow pack and -5C temperature along with Mt Erebus literally took my breath away. As we boarded the bus people shouted about penguins and the cold, but I had eyes only for Erebus. Standing at 12,500 feet Erebus is the most active volcano in Antarctica and we were directly in its shadow. Its sharp icy ridges and continual plume of thick milky smoke make it look even more formidable and it is therefore no wonder that early explorers named it after their valiant ship that was the first to conquer the journey to the Antarctic.

LAB 1:Currently I am located at the main Crary lab in McMurdo (photo shown left is from the top of Observation Hill). This lab is very large and has all of the common conveniences. However, within the next week my team and I will be leaving the comforts of McMurdo and heading out into the felid where the real science begins.
Doing research can mean anything from stepping outside into the yard and collecting rain water to taking a helicopter plane two hours away and camping for up to a month at a time. Here in Antarctica we are doing the latter of the two… This gives an entirely new meaning to preparing for the field.
Usually in science you will prepare to be out in the filed for a day or two of sampling but you will be able to return to the lab to analyze your data. Here it is a completely different story. We will be without things like: containers, sinks, WATER, chemicals, cleaning solutions, zip lock bags, and everything else unless we bring it. Therefore, for the next week before we leave we are all planning, cleaning bottles, washing equipment, and packaging everything in bubble wrap so that it is safe for the 2 hour helicopter ride. Apart from all of that we are planning all of our meals (to feed 5) for the next two weeks and bringing that food with us to the field camps too. So there is a lot of work to do and when we are not in classes or lectures we are in the lab preparing. While doing so however we are all repeating the mantra that soon the grunt work will be over and we will be heading out to sample.
One thing at a time though. Each bottle must be washed then rinsed three times, labeled with tape, packaged, boxed, and sent out to the hanger before we go.