Vulcan South Summer 2004 Deployment Pictures

The crew is ready to board our flight south to McMurdo. It's rather warm in Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear in Christchurch in the summer.

Kevin and Doug flying south on the crowded C-141.

Our first view of ice from the window of the C-141!

Everyone from the flight is getting ready to board "Ivan the Terra Bus for the trip from the Pegasus ice-shelf runway to McMurdo. Ivan goes very slowly, but the scenery is great.

Some scenes from McMurdo: The ice breakers Polar Sea and Polar Star hard at work to clear the port, the coolest pickup truck ever, and the research vessel Nathanial Palmer with Observation Hill in the background on a very windy day.

Kevin standing on the Nathanial Palmer. Most of the people on our flight from Christchurch were going out on the Palmer for a 30-day marine geophysics cruise in the Ross Sea.

Penguins! That's right a colony of penguins just to the left of the open waterway. Look closely. Moments after this shot we saw a minke whale in the waterway right near the pens. I should have brought a longer lens.

The LC-130 flight to the South Pole travels along the Trans-Antarctic mountains crossing the most beautiful and otherworldly landscape I've seen. It's the most scenic flight going.

An LC-130 rumbling down the snow runway taking off for McMurdo. Some of the station buildings are in the background. We have to cross the runway to get to the dark sector where the Gmount is set up in the little blue Weatherhaven tent called the "SPIFI dome." You can see AST/RO in the foreground and the old DASI plywood ground shield in the background. Kevin and I took a little R&R and walked out to see the abandoned Russian plane. It was flown in last summer, broke down, and was left when the crew & passengers flew out on a chartered Twin-Otter. It's got fabric wings!

The Vulcan South photometer is on the Gmount and ready to move out of the Weatherhaven tent.

Carpenter Dave is adjusting the forks on the extending fork-lift. The Gmount the with Vulcan South photometer and UNSW's Antarctic Fibre-Optic Spectrometer went on the amazing extending Cat fork-lift over to a giant sled for the two kilometer sleigh ride from the Dark (dork) Sector to the new AASTO location in the Clean Air sector.

We got stuck at the runway crossing while Jason Dunham's plane was landing, so I did a science experiment. The sky is so clear at the South Pole that you can cover the Sun with just your thumb and see dark blue sky right next to the Sun. Try this at home (but be careful not to look at the Sun!) and you'll see that the sky is very bright near the Sun due to scattering from particles in the air.

The sled eventually made it's way over to the AASTO and we found out that we were scheduled for the Mantis crane at 2:30 that after noon. After a long slow drive from the station, the crane made quick work of the lift onto the tower. Carpenter Dave guided the Gmount down onto the tower, and in about three minutes the job was done with Vulcan South securely on the tower. The external equipment shelter can be seen in the foreground of this close-up.

After several frustrating days of computer problems we finally got "first light" from the Vulcan South photometer at the South Pole. You can see Mark Jarnyk walking back from the Atmospheric Research Observatory (ARO). The vignetting (darkening around the edges) is caused by the very short exposure time, which didn't allow the shutter time to fully open. It's too bright to take longer exposures.