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).
A quiet week at the Pole—but that doesn’t mean that nothing happened. First of all, look at that sky! Lots of stars and swirling auroras, but also a bright rising moon make for a very picturesque setting.
Since the moon was down last week, many winterovers—including IceCube’s—were outside braving the (extreme) cold, looking to catch some good shots of the Milky Way or the aurora australis, also known as the southern lights.
A bright swath of auroras extending low across the sky with a clear view of the Milky Way above—what more could one want (except perhaps to see it in person)? Well, those who winterover at the South Pole station count themselves among the lucky ones.
How does slow equal fast? Well, apparently for fire rescue teams, slow mean smooth, and smooth means fast. Last week, the teams competed for time in donning their gear and saving colleagues from across the gym.
A sensor from the enormous Antarctic observatory IceCube has joined the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution.
