After a five-year John Bahcall postdoctoral fellowship at WIPAC, astroparticle physicist Markus Ahlers returned to Europe in February 2017. Currently an assistant professor in the Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology research group at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Markus is now enjoying one of those dreams come true: the birth of his own research team. A Villum Young Investigator grant for 7.350.000 DDK ($1.2 million), which he was formally awarded on January 23, has secured the foundation of a new research group.
Each winter, once it gets dark enough, the station covers up all of its windows to prevent light from interfering with light-sensitive projects at the South Pole. This year they decided to have a contest for the window cover art entries.
Didn’t we say the sun had set already? We did. But that doesn’t mean the sky goes absolutely dark right away. It’s a slow sunset, with light lingering even after the sun has dipped below the horizon. This image shows a great twilight shot of a clear sky with some color along the horizon and the IceCube lab in the distance.
Who needs the sun when you have a moon like this! This image shows the moon hanging low above the Dark Sector, home to the South Pole Telescope, shown here, in addition to the IceCube Lab, BICEP, and MAPO.
At the South Pole, you never know whether the skies will be clear enough to capture a nice image of that last flicker before the sun goes below the horizon. Last week a big storm rolled in that threatened things, but it cleared in time for the winterovers to capture some great photos and bid the sun adieu for a while.
Last week was stormy at the Pole, according to IceCube’s winterovers. Guess that’s where these icy blotches stuck to the window came from. The detector was relatively quiet, but there was plenty of other activity to keep the winterovers busy.
