The last Sunset at McMurdo

Hello! 

Guess what we had last week at 1:45pm on April 24th! The last sunset!   Now, don't be thinking that we are wandering around in utter darkness just yet.  In fact, it's still quite bright for a few hours in the afternoon.  I've included a picture I took at 1pm on the 24th, still plenty of light.   

March and April have been fun months to be living through.  For March we had almost normal sunlight.  The sun would set around bedtime and rise as we were getting up.  It was novel.  The first time I didn't have to close my shades at bedtime was very exciting and all the summer people were marveling about it at breakfast for a few day.  After that novelty wore off,  we got the April sunset. Pretty much constant sunrise/sunset colors. The mountains and sky were a stunning pink and red all day long for weeks.   It was a delight.  One of those days, I looked over toward Erebus and saw the steam coming out of the top, but with the pink sky, the steam was glowing red. Spectacular. 

I'm curious to see how I'll settle into the darkness. As it is,  I can still feel myself waiting each day for it to get brighter and experience a minor sense of relief when I walk out of a building and it's a bit lighter out.  I wonder if this isn't partly because the sky is still in the process of  lightening and so I expect it to get bright. Perhaps I won't feel that expectation when we are total dark mode.   It will be an interesting experiment.   I have a friend her that's been tracking all the data for sunrises and sunsets.  She's still putting information together so will have some trends to share with us in the future, but for now I've learned some interesting facts about twilight. 

There are three different types of twilight: Civil, Nautical and Astronomical.  Nautical is named this way because it's the twilight when seafarers can see the stars enough to navigate. Astronomical Twilight is when it's dark enough for astronomers to stargaze.  In any day, you will go through all three of those twilights.  Start at night, move into astronomical, next is nautical, then civil and then day. 

Currently, with the sun just setting, we are in Civil Twilight for most of the day. The sun in only about 6° below the horizon.  On May 11th we'll move into Nautical twilight with the sun 12° below the horizon.  We'll have Nautical twilight at some point during the day until the next sunrise.   We'll start with about 6 hours a day and then by June it will drop down to 3.  So there is no point during this winter when we will have full "night" for 24 hours. Isn't it all so interesting?!

And Auroras!  There have been some sightings but I've yet to see any.  I'm really excited for an Aurora viewing. 

Well folks,  I hope everything is well with you wherever in the world you might be.  Enjoy the pictures! 

This is my 1pm photo on the day of the sunset.    I've been taking one every day (almost) at this time and I'm hoping to put them all together.  We'll see. 

A storage space at Lake Hoare in the Dry Valleys with the Canada Glacier in the background. That glacier is their source of water.  They collect (you're going to love this) "Glacier Berries" and melt them down. Glacier berries are parts of the glacier that have calved off. 

A super secret silent dance party on New Years' eve.  We met up at 11:30pm,  brought our own music and headphones and danced around to our own beats to ring in the new year. It was incredibly fun.

The inside of an empty LC-130. 

I like the story of this Helo pad with it's tiny H.  When the painters were sent out there, the Head Pilot told them to paint something fun on it. The painters painted a butterfly. You can kind of see the outline of it still.  Someone, however, didn't like that and made them go back out and repaint it.  What a bummer.  On the bright side, because of this project, I was allowed to ride out in the extra seat on the helicopter and got a little fly over in the Dry Valleys. 

The moon and Antarctica. 

It snowed in my pickle (the name of the tractor). The pickles are very old vehicles from the military and there is no real seal on the doors so the wind blows the snow right inside. 

SCIENCE!  The Research Assistant, Liz, touring us through the Arrival Heights building where she monitors a variety of science experiments. 

This is the boxes that the science equipment from Japan comes in. HOW ADORABLE! 

All the science equipment, all lit up.