Penguin Spotting

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Snowflakes & Mini-Balloon Launch

Yesterday the LDB team launched a pathfinder balloon to map out the air currents above Antarctica. The weather guys say a good anti-cyclone is moving over the continent, so a launch window should be opening soon. This is good news! The pathfinder balloon is similar to the balloons used to launch the science experiments, but about 1/1000th the scale, and carry only some GPS, weather monitoring, and communications equipment. We all went out to watch the launch, it was . . . somewhat exciting.


Later that day the temperature dropped about 15 degrees, and the creating some "diamond dust", basically crysalizing the mositure in the air. It looked like dancing lights when the sun reflected off of them, unfortunately these lights were too small for the camera to capture well, but its something cool that I have not seen before untill I came down here.

We got a light dusting of snow as well later on, Pietro has a really good macro feature on his digital camera, and so we grabbed a few snowflake photos. I think these turned out really nicely:


Thats about it. They moved the ice runway and "airport" from the sea ice to Pegasses, which is right next to use. So we get to listen to C-17s and Herculese transport planes flying overhead all the time now. I'll try to grab some pictures later.

7 Comments:

  • Amazing snowflake pictures!

    By Blogger Christina, at 3:51 AM  

  • What's the surface on which the first three snowflake pictures were taken?

    By Blogger Matt, at 12:41 PM  

  • Its a reflective heat shield tape we use to protect from the solar radiation. It comes on long rolls like duct tape, but is very high quality reflective silver. It looks like it would make a great Haloween costume, but then you find out it cost $1,800 a roll. Yes, thats a comma, not a decimal. About the price of my old car.

    By Blogger Nathan, at 12:45 PM  

  • Enjoying your blog!
    So when do you get to come home?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 6:36 AM  

  • Check out wikipedia's entry on snow for some more awesome close-up pictures of snowflakes. Also, don't ask me why I was looking up snow in Wikipedia.

    By Blogger Matt, at 9:24 AM  

  • Greetings Nate,

    I agree with christina; the snowflake pictures are amazing. And, I am glad to see that you are finding multiple uses for your high quality reflective silver.

    I also enjoyed the adventures of Penkie. What do your coworkers have to say about the antics of you and your stuffed, tuxedoed friend?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:17 PM  

  • Naru, it looks like we are going to be stuck here a while, see my latest post.

    John, Thanks! My antarctic colleagues though it was a little strange walking around with a stuffed penguin in my pocket, but did ask where it went after Penkie was done posing for the day.

    By Blogger Nathan, at 1:04 PM  

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