Less than a week after its inauguration on January 17, 2019, the prototype Schwarzschild-Couder telescope (pSCT), a telescope design proposed for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), successfully detected its first Cherenkov light on January 23 at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona. A dual-mirrored medium-sized telescope, the SCT is proposed to cover the middle of CTA’s energy range (80 GeV–50 TeV).
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.
The sixth edition of the IceCube Masterclass hosted over 150 students at 13 institutions in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. The masterclasses were held on January 30, March 20, April 4 and April 11.
There’s still just a bit of sunlight lingering, as seen in the image at top—what’s not so easily discernible in the image are the stars, but the winterovers report having seen them for the first time in months. Caption
Although the sun has set and winter has begun, it takes a while before it actually gets dark at the South Pole. Twilight is a prolonged process there, lasting weeks. Here there’s still plenty of daylight to see the station as it starts to look nice and frosty without direct sunlight.
IceCube's winterovers had the good luck to enjoy clear weather last week. They were able to capture some dramatic photos of the sunset. Caption
