Another photo for the collection

Every year the South Pole winter crew leaves behind a group photo of the members who spent the polar night taking care of the station and running the scientific experiments. There's quite a collection now since crews have been wintering over since 1957. The photos used to hang in the old Dome library and pool room,which were demolished last year, and now there's a new home for the memories.

This is the new hall of fame with all of the crew photos hanging on the wall between the computer lab to the left and Medical at the far end.

The very first winter crew braved the elements in 1957 and included Paul Siple, a great explorer of the Antarctic who also developed the wind chill factor. The photos above are of the 1957 and 1958 crews.

Just outside the door of Medical are the photos from the last four winters. Even if you zoomed in on this shot, you still probably wouldn't be able to make me out but I'm there in 2003 (upper left), 2005 (upper right) and 2006 (lower right).

So following the tradition, we gathered for one last group photo.

One of the proud accomplishments of this winter is this is the inaugural year of the South Pole Telescope, the 10 meter telescope looking at cosmic microwave background radiation from the earliest moments of the universe's formation. We gathered at SPT for a photo shoot.

Once again, Robert Schwarz was the photographer and we ascended to the roof of the DSL building for a group shot with the 10 meter dish in the background. Unfortunately the BICEP groundshield was casting a shadow over half the crew.

Luckily our other shot came out better as we posed on a big snow mound just outside of DSL with the dish towering over us. I think this picture will look very nice on the wall...

For more information about the early South Pole crews and Antarctic history in general, see Bill Spindler's fabulous website.