Death Star Lasers & Ninjas!
This past monday gave all the LDB (Long Duration Balloon) science teams a relief, with a break in the cloudy, windy weather for some blue skies and sunshine. This was particularly good for SBI, as our telescope looks at the sun. Clouds = no sun = vital alignment & calibration work cannot get done. So, thanks to the sun, we were able to make great progress, as well as discover how quickly no ozone layer and ~100% surface reflection will give you a sunburn. Its ok, no-one looks like a well done hot dog yet, but there are a few people around base who's faces match the color of the big red jacket.
I have posted some photos in the galleries, but by far the most entertaining event of the day was when Bliss of SBI decided to go out in front of Mt. Erebus in his full Gi (including bare feet) and practice his Tai Chuan Do Katas:
It looked very majestic with Mt. Erebus rising in the backgound, and intimidated the hell out of the other science teams. Team SBI has a ninja! They won't be borrowing our tools without asking now!
As all 3 science payloads went outside, I noticed BLAST bears a striking reseblance to the Death Star Laser:
Ok, so technically BLAST stands for Balloon-bourne Large Apeture Sub-Millimeter Telescope, and is not a space bourne death ray to destroy us all. I still don't want to stand in front of that thing, that main reflector is over 1.5m in diameter (~10 feet), so think ant-under-magnifying-glass, particularaly down here in Antarctica. Actually, the BLAST crew is a good group and comprised mainly of Canadians, so they can't be too focused on world domination now can they, eh?
Its sunny again today so another very long work day looms ahead. Here are the photo galleries:
I have posted some photos in the galleries, but by far the most entertaining event of the day was when Bliss of SBI decided to go out in front of Mt. Erebus in his full Gi (including bare feet) and practice his Tai Chuan Do Katas:
It looked very majestic with Mt. Erebus rising in the backgound, and intimidated the hell out of the other science teams. Team SBI has a ninja! They won't be borrowing our tools without asking now!
As all 3 science payloads went outside, I noticed BLAST bears a striking reseblance to the Death Star Laser:
Ok, so technically BLAST stands for Balloon-bourne Large Apeture Sub-Millimeter Telescope, and is not a space bourne death ray to destroy us all. I still don't want to stand in front of that thing, that main reflector is over 1.5m in diameter (~10 feet), so think ant-under-magnifying-glass, particularaly down here in Antarctica. Actually, the BLAST crew is a good group and comprised mainly of Canadians, so they can't be too focused on world domination now can they, eh?
Its sunny again today so another very long work day looms ahead. Here are the photo galleries:
posted by Nathan at
9:13 AM
2 Comments:
Very awesome Nate!
Does that guy have black toes yet?
Also, tell Matt to get on the Death Star laser beam PhotoShop ASAP.
By
Chris, at 3:52 PM
When you get back ask me about all of the "mind control" questions we get at the library, lol. Now they'll think we do mind control from Antartica (well to me it looks like that as much as a death ray!)
By
Christina, at 11:36 AM
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