A day in the life of an astronomer at South Pole Station

I traveled to South Pole Station to help deploy the BICEP3 telescope. Here’s what a day was like.

Between 2014 and 2016, I worked as a mechanical engineer with the Cosmic Microwave Background lab in the Astronomy & Astrophysics department at Harvard. The aim of our experiment was to study the static leftover from the big bang (also called the “cosmic microwave background”) to understand more about how the universe started. To do this, we needed to take deep measurements in the microwave band which requires very dry and stable weather. And where’s the driest place on Earth? Antarctica!

The US Antarctica Program operates three stations in Antarctica. Lucky for my lab group, the most southern station has the perfect conditions to do microwave astronomy: the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station located at the geographic South Pole. Funded by the National Science Foundation, there are great facilities on station for scientists to conduct ground breaking research.

My group operated two sets of telescopes at South Pole Station. Throughout the Austral summer season (between Halloween and Valentines Day), our team would take shifts traveling to South Pole Station to do upgrades, install new instruments, and perform calibrations. Around 25 members of the BICEP/Keck team make the journey South each year. I had the amazing opportunity to travel to South Pole Station for two of these deployments.

Me at the geographic South Pole marker.

Day in the Life

On December 29th 2014, the station crew ran an event called “Day in the Life” where everyone was encouraged to take photographs across their day. I participated; here’s the chronicle of that day!

00:00 (midnight)

I’m staying up late to work on a graduate school applications — I’m applying to PhD programs in astronomy. I’m in the Science Lab working on the second floor, which is really a half floor used mostly for storage, sitting in my favorite chair on station.

The internet comes by satellite on a schedule.

In order to use the internet, I need to stay up late. The internet is only available for 10 hours a day, and today, it’s up when most of us should be asleep. We get our internet by satellite, and so it’s only up when the satellites are passing above the station (when you see the green bars). It’s also very slow. For example, you cannot load google docs or youtube videos.

Science lab in the main part of the station. You can see it’s bright outside even at midnight.

My favorite chair on the top secret half-floor area of the science lab.

01:00

After finishing my application, I head to bed. Everyone at Pole has a small single room, and I lofted my bed to have more space for my desk.

My room at South Pole Station.

Drawings that a friend made for me of Charmander (my favorite Pokemon) posted on my wall.

I have a polar-bear shaped humidifier that moistens the dry air. While the high altitude and low moisture are good for the telescopes, it makes it hard to sleep and can leave you with a bloody nose when you wake up if you don’t have a humidifier.

I finally make it to bed (with my faithful stuffed axolotl) at 1:41am.

07:30

Every work day (Monday — Saturday), I wake up and join stretching in the station’s gym.

South Pole Station has a gym where people can recreate and exercise that’s also used for station gatherings.

Folks listening to the daily announcements before stretching.

After, I head back to the Science Lab for the BICEP/Keck daily morning meeting. Everyone on the team is still just waking up.

Jimmy (Stanford grad student) at the morning meeting.

08:30

I usually grab breakfast between stretching and the meeting, but today stretching ran late so I went straight to the meeting. I missed the official breakfast window, but luckily, there’s always plenty of cereal.

I sit with LT, a firefighter on station, as a finish a quick bowl of cereal.

Mike (kitchen assistant) is super jazzed about starting in on the morning dishes.

09:00

After breakfast, it’s time to head out to the telescope! The telescope is located one kilometer from the station (about a 15–20 minute walk) so we have to go outside every day. To go outside, we wear a set of Extreme Cold Weather (or ECW) gear from head to toe, which we are issued in New Zealand before arriving in the Antarctic.

My ECW gear includes a Carhartt jacket, Carhartt overalls, blue FDX boots, mittens, glove liners, balaclava, neck gator, ski goggles, and my own favorite MIT hat.

Here’s what I have in my pockets today. But I admit, I carry a lot of the same things at home.

My labmate, Caroline, gears up to walk with me to the telescope.

My labmate Caroline (a mechanical engineering graduate student from MIT) and I usually walk the 1km out to lab together, but today we were able to hitch a ride with one of the carpenters. The road to the telescope intersects the airplane runway, and so you must wait to cross if a plane is landing. Today we had to wait for a Basler tourist plane to land!

We rode a sled pulled by this snowmobile to lab today.

We had to wait for a tourist plane to cross in front of us before we could finish the ride to lab.

We eventually made it to the building that houses the BICEP experiment: the Dark Sector Lab (we just call it “DSL”). This building also houses the South Pole Telescope. SPT is huge! It is 10 meters in diameter, so it’s big enough for people to walk on. Like my telescope (BICEP3), it’s also measuring the cosmic microwave background, but because of its size, it views a smaller patch of sky at higher resolution.

Outside the Dark Sector Lab (DSL) building which houses the South Pole Telescope and BICEP3 experiment.

10:00

Today we continue to reassemble BICEP3, the newest telescope in our fleet. It took over three years to design and build BICEP3, and this winter (2015) will be its first season collecting data. The aperture of BICEP3 is roughly the size of a manhole cover, and inside, its systems are cooled to within one-quarter of a degree from absolute zero. Once fully commissioned, BICEP3 will collect data at five times the speed of BICEP2.

BICEP3 in the progress of being rebuilt at the South Pole.

Kimmy (a grad student from Stanford, right) and Kate (a grad student from Harvard, left) work together to add mylar to BICEP3. This improves our data quality by preventing stray radiation from entering through the side of the telescope.

Zeesh (a post doc from Stanford, left) and Grant (a graduate student from CalTech, right) fix the telescope mount’s pointing model by trying to locate a star with a small optical camera bolted on the mount. Star pointing is a tricky task in the summer because it’s hard to see the stars because the sun never sets.

Jimmy (a graduate student from Stanford) tests cables in the dark because the lights must stay off during star pointing.

This morning, I’m helping Caroline wrangle helium lines. We will use these lines to pump the helium into a fancy fridge system inside the telescope to cool our detectors. My current task is to engrave the new helium lines with a serial number.

Helium line time

11:00

After I finish the helium lines, Kate and I go to MAPO to finish sanding a set of homemade titanium washers for the innards of our telescope’s cooling system.

Kate finishing the sanding.

MAPO is another science building located near DSL and is home to our other experiment, the Keck Array. It also houses a machine shop for the scientists. Dave (the SPT machinist), Steve (the BICEP machinist form Harvard), and Dennis (the station welder) are also using the shop today.

Dave at the lathe

Kate and I finish using the belt sander pretty quickly, so we stop by the old Viper control room. Viper was a CMB telescope that operated between 1998–2005. This building has been decommissioned and will be demolished later this season.

Kate entering the old Viper building that is now deeply buried in blown insnow.

We want to save the flammables cabinet, so we pull it out of the building and into the snow. The cabinet is heavy, but with some finagling and fine maneuvering from Steve to back up the snowmobile, we are able to get it loaded.

Steve backs up the snowmobile so we can load the flammables cabinet.

12:00

We head back to the station for lunch.

The galley at lunchtime.

My lunch

My friend Sean (a carpenter) is now a walrus.

13:00

An LC-130 flight lands after lunch, which brings in new people, fresh vegetables, and mail. It’s operated by the New York National Air Guard.

A new BICEP team member arrives on this flight and is carrying a “220 GHz focal plane” for one of the five Keck receivers.

Sadly, the flight also means the departure of 3 of our team members. They will head to McMurdo Station located on the Antarctic cost near the Ross Ice Shelf. It’s the first stop on their journey home. Their flight will be 3 hours and travel over the Transantarctic Mountains. From there, they will fly back to Christchurch, New Zealand (8.5 hour flight).

Our departing team members leaving the station: John Kovac (Harvard professor), Eric (a veteran telescope engineer), and Steve (the Harvard machinist).

14:00

After saying goodbye, I help deliver the new focal plane to MAPO. The new focal plane will allow the Keck array to observe in an additional frequency, brining the experiment up to three colors. Having multiple colors allows us to determine how much of our signal is coming from dust in our galaxy versus gravity in the early universe. Knowing this ratio will be critical in determining which theories about the origin of the universe may be correct.

Our telescopes will be able to see in a new “color” with the new focal plane.

When I arrive at MAPO, there’s a full-sized crane helping with repairs on the roof.

14:30

This afternoon, I plan to finish attaching a cable tray that will allow the BICEP3 mount to move in “elevation.”

In order to do this, I climb up the mount and sit on a small ledge. Because of the difficulty of the space, I’m expecting that the task will take most of the afternoon. Luckily, I have plenty of music downloaded to my phone.

I spent the afternoon drilling holes at the top of the mount, near where you see the very bright circle.

I’m drilling the cable tray mounting plate to the blue steel structure of the telescope mount.

The aluminium shavings are collecting on my arm.

16:00

I take a break from drilling to see what my labmates are up to.

Jimmy and Kimmy work in the clean room on the assembly of BICEP3

Caroline is downstairs, still trying to deal with the helium compressors.

Zeesh tests the new mesh filter stack with a green laser.

Two members of the South Pole Telescope team are up on the dish! They are doing modifications to their telescope’s “snout.”

18:00

Sam (our winterover for the coming year), Caroline, and I head back to the station for dinner.

Caroline passes out in the snow from the hard days work while we wait for Sam to drop off something in MAPO.

18:30

Another rare occurrence! Today I receive mail, and I get two packages! One was from my mom, full of Christmas gifts of Legos and new clothes. The other is from my housemate in Boston and includes a hand-drawn cartoon of me driving an Antarctic vehicle, chocolate pretzels, and a USB stick with my favorite youtube videos.

Mail! New objects!

19:00

I head to dinner. Afterwards, I stick around the galley to hear one of the mountaineers give a talk about her years guiding tourists up Mount Vinson near the Antarctic Peninsula. The talk is beyond inspiring.

Dinner taco

My friends Maddie (one of the three station meteorologists) and Zowie (kitchen assistant) sitting with me at dinner.

Talk after dinner given by Susan about many years of mountaineering in Antarctica.

22:00

South Pole Station has an amazing band room, so I’m taking the opportunity to learn electric bass. I practice by myself for a bit, but soon a group comes to practice for the upcoming New Year’s show. They let me stick around, and so I join their practice.

The band’s five members are from four different work centers. South Pole is a rare opportunity to meet people from all over the US (and world) from all walks of life.

Jase (cook on ukulele) and Joey (carpenter on bass)

Bill (summer station manager on guitar) and Benzo (carpenter on drums)

John (South Pole Telescope engineer on sax)

23:00

On the way to bed, I stop by the galley. The station is pretty quiet but a couple people are still stirring.

I take a look out the window and wish good night to the ceremonial pole marker and the 12 flags from the countries of the Antarctic treaty. I’m exhausted, but I love it here. There’s an MIT mantra that applies equally well here at Pole: IHTFP. It can stand for many things, but for me today it’s, “I have truly found paradise.”

The view from the galley of the Ceremonial South Pole marker with the flags of the original Antarctic treaty signers. (colors distorted)