Week 14 at the Pole

balloonlaunch
Benjamin Eberhardt, IceCube/NSF

The sky was still bright enough last week to take a photo of an ozone balloon launch, the first one to send up a special plastic balloon in the hopes of a better survival as it ascends in the cold atmosphere. These balloons go quite high, reaching up to 30 kilometers or so, but at this time of year that’s not even high enough to get a direct glimpse of the sun, which is already below the horizon. The winterovers think they may have spotted their first auroras last week, but they have no photos yet since what they saw were just very faint shimmers with little color. The image of the ICL server room, on the other hand, is quite bright and colorful, as seen further below, lit up entirely by blinking status lights. (Who needs auroras?) At bottom, everyone is sitting in their favorite spots for the weekly and apparently popular viewing of “Game of Thrones.”

sunsetbluesky
Benjamin Eberhardt, IceCube/NSF
flaglinetoICL
Benjamin Eberhardt, IceCube/NSF
ICLserverroom
Benjamin Eberhardt, IceCube/NSF
gameofthrones
Benjamin Eberhardt, IceCube/NSF