Otter's eye view

It was time once again for the aerial photo missions. Yesterday the Twin Otter took up two groups of several Polies to take photos of the entire station. This is done every year to survey the place and to help measure the amount of snow drifting that occurred during the winter. Photos are by Robert Schwarz and Steffen Richter.

This is the whole thing, minus the Dark Sector that is to the left of the skiway. The plume of exhaust is from the power plant generator.
The Dome and Elevated Station.

This is a good shot of the snow mound that is being created from the snow dug out of the Dome entrance. A couple of guys have skied down it already.

The Dark Sector: MAPO on the left and SPT, the 10 meter South Pole Telescope on the right.

SPT is where we took our winterover group photo.

The Ice Cube Lab is in the foreground and SPT in the back. The haze is the power plant exhaust.

Another good one of the station. HERE is about where the geographic pole is (where the word "HERE" is just outside the photo).

These are the berms where we store all kinds of stuff including

a bunch of spools like the one that rolled up the fuel hose.

The fourth Basler flight came in yesterday and our population is 116, now doubled what we had for the winter. The fifth and now final Basler flight is planned for today. We have beautiful clear skies and unlimited visibility so if conditions are good in Mactown today, we should have more company later today. Currently the temp is -60.5F or -51.4C. We'll need to warm up a tad if we want to get an LC-130 landing here on Monday as scheduled.