Take a look at the sky

One of the things that I has caught my attention the most down here at Davis is the amount of beauty and colour that can be found in the sky.  From clouds, sunsets, sunpillars to auroras. 

 

Cirrus clouds.

Sunsets are quite spectacular down here at Davis.  It's amazing how many different colours come through.  Here are a couple of examples.

Both of these are overlooking the exact location.  Even the same sunset can project so many different colours.
Another phenomena that can be seen down here are sun pillars.  These are normally only seen around the Arctic or Antarctic or at high altitudes.  This is one example seen only yesterday.  Unfortunately my camera does not do it justice for how spectacular this looked.

Sun Pillar

Caused by ice crystals in the sky, it gives the effect of sun shining like a torch directly up into the sky.

Along with sun pillars are sun dogs.  I've yet to see one but I'm keeping a look.

Sun Dog from the AAD website

They are in simple a halo around the sun but seen on the horizon and they give the effect of three sun pillars.

 An example of a halo.

Now that we have more darkness we have all been hanging out for another phenomena that can only be seen at both ends of the world.  These are Auroras.  My first one I saw was spectacular.  I also realised that this is really the only time down here that you see green down here.

Aurora over Davis (Photo courtesy of Andy Burgess)

These have been another highlight of my trip to Antarctica.  Watching these gets the hairs on the back of your neck standing up.  The pictures that you see of these are good, but watching the movements of these is awesome.  The speed that they can move and the way that they snake and flare is surreal.  Auroras are the result of the emissions of photons in the Earth's upper atmosphere above 80 kms from ionized nitrogen atoms regaining an electron, and oxygen and nitrogen atoms returning from an excited state to ground state. They are ionized or excited by the collision of solar wind particles being funneled down and accelerated along the Earth's magnetic field lines.  (Wikipedia).

Scientist down here are also studying the atmosphere with great interest.  One of the ways they do it is by use of a giant laser.  Called LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging)  data from the laser can be used to give information such as temperatures, wind direction speed even analyse the gases found up to about 85km.

  

LIDAR Building

Quite spectacular to look at and brilliantly bright it seems to go forever.  Unlight cheap laser pointers this laser has very little divergance.  This means that the beam width is only a tiny bit wider the further you are away from it.  The LIDAR at Davis comes out at 40mm and at 100km the width is about 10m. 

 

The data is collected by the backscatter of light seen by two telescopes next to the beam.

Other people that look at the sky with a lot of interest down here are the Meteorological staff.  Yesterday I had the opportunity to release a met balloon.

 

Me releasing the balloon

At the end of the balloon is a little box called a radiosonde that sends data back to the met station.  From here they plot a chart of the temperatures and winds up to about 100,000 ft.  Keeping an eye on the weather is vitally important for all of our operations down here.  Conditions can change so rapidly.  A good example of this is seen in the contrast between the picture above taken yesterday and the pictures below taken this morning.

 

Iceberg Cruise

Manfred our tour guide

One of the recreational activities that is a highlight for everyone here at Davis, are the iceberg tours. Using IRBs or Inflatable Rubber Boats with an outboard motor on them, you travel around the islands of Anchorage, Gardiner and Magnetic looking at the many different shaped icebergs.  If you are luck enough you also get to see the occassional jade berg and Leopard Seal. 

 

This picture is in front of Magnetic Island.  The island is a breeding ground for a very large colony of Adelie Penguins.  Unfortunately most of them have vacated the island with their young. 

 

Here are a few families.  The chicks are almost as big as their parents and are still losing their baby feathers called down.  They are very funny to watch.  They dont have the surefootedness of their parents and run around tripping over everything.

Shortly into our cruise we were visited by a leopard seal.  This guy was as keen to check us out as we were him.  I dont think he was interested in photographing us.  I think he was sniffing and sizing us up as a tasty meal.

 

Our next big highlight of our trip was a jade berg.  These are fairly rare to find.  No one is exactly sure how they are formed but the best theory is Jade bergs are icebergs formed on the bottom of the ice shelf where fresh water with algae in it has gathered.with a distinctive green tinge.  They are incredibly beautiful and mesmorising, as this Adelie obviously thought.  Very interesting on how this little fella got up to where he did. They must be able to get some height out of the water when they jump.

Some theories also say their colour is a result of highly compressed ice which has had the air modules squeezed out. This compression happens to the ice at the very bottom of a glacier with tons of pressure from above.  I tend to think the algae one is more likely.

  

As you can tell we were all rather excited about the sights that night.  Time flew by.  It was hard to believe that we were cruising around for 2 hours.

 

 There were also normal icebergs which has some weird shapes created by the weather.

 Even though the weather was absolutely perfect for our outing, the night was still rather cold. As you can see by this picture taken at 8pm we no longer have 24 hours of sunlight anymore, with the sun setting at 8pm and rising at about 4am.  We are losing over an hour of sunlight each week.

Gardening in Antarctica

Yes believe it or not, we have a little garden at Davis Station!!

 

Not exactly your standard garden, but inside the white building Davis Station has a pretty good hydraponics setup and grows produce all year round.  Mainly established for the Wintering crew, this will supply them fresh produce such as lettuce, bok choy, tomotoes, cucumbers and herbs.

This month has been warm enough to leave the door ajar 24 hours a day to regulate the temperature back down to about 25.  It has been as high as 32!

 

One of the warmest building at Davis Station and definitely the one with the highest humidity level. 

Walking into the building the first thing that you notice is the overwhelming earthy smell, particularly the tomato plants.  Aside from Hydraponics setups, there is no plant life to be found on Antarctica. Apart from the beach smells, the Elephant seals, Adelie colonies etc. the place is virtually void of any normal smells found in Australia.

We have two rooms, with 5 different systems.  Each system has its own water tank and a pump which pumps water and nutrients to the plants.  These are our herbs.

 

This is my gardening buddy, Melanie Ho filling one of the tanks for the cucumbers.  Mel and I are one of 3 teams that cycle weekly and help look after the hydraponics setup.  Mel is a Marine Biologist and down here researching for her PHD.  Mel helps run the Aquarium, where all the marine specimens are kept, that the divers collect......more on this next time!!!

 

Each morning we fill most of the tanks.  The tomato tank uses by far the most water.  We put about 10 litres of water every morning into the tomato tank.  Other duties include checking for blockages or leaks through the system, sweeping the floor (dropped perculite and leaves etc.), recording ambient and tank water temperatures and whether we filled the tanks with water or not.  The lights we use are a high pressure sodium light.  These last about a year before being replaced.

 

We also monitor pH and EC levels.  These are the levels for our lettuce seedlings.

pH is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of soil or a solution. A basic, neutral solution is numerically equal to 7. The solution gets more acidic as the numbers decrease and more alkaline as the numbers increase. The ph scale ranges from 0 pH (very acidic) to 14 pH (highly alkaline). Pure water has a pH of 7, indicating that it is neither alkaline nor acidic, but neutral. Different nutrients may be absorbed at different pH levels. 

EC stands for Electrical Conductivity.  Low conductivitiy means low nutrient concentration, often resulting in nutritional deficiencies and slow plant growth. High conductivity means more food for your plants, but can also burn or kill them.  Depending on the plant or if the plant is bearing fruit or in flower, these levels can vary.

These are our Bok Choy seedlings. 
 
We treat the hydraponics setup as a quarantine area.  All Hydraponics waste is burnt in our Warren, which is a high temperature incinerator.  We also have to wash our hands everytime we enter the containers and before we touch the plants so there is no chance of introducing any diseases to the plants.

Our capsicum plants.

All of our produce is welcomed by the kitchen and does not last long with 80 or so expeditioners.  As most of our food stored frozen or canned, it is nice to have fresh produce.  During the winter, it goes a little further with only 20 or so mouths to feed.

Field Travel Training Part 2

Day 2 of our trip we headed from Trajer Ridge Melon around to Watts Hutt via Crooked Lake Apple.  This gave the 3 "trainees" more time in learning how to navigate.
This map shows from about 2km south west of Trajer Ridge the route we took to Watts Hut.

As you head west from Trajer Ridge, there is very little ice and snow to see.  There are a few frozen lakes along the way, but the landscape starts looking like the moon.

It is a geologist haven around the vestfolds.  There is a huge variety of rocks.  Here is one of the more interesting ones to be seen.

This is perhaps the only suspension bridge in Antarctica.  By mid January, under this bridge will be a creek flowing out from Watts Lake into the Ellis Fjord, just north of Watts Hut.

 

No running water yet, just a heap of snow built up underneath.

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Watts Hut was to be our overnight stay. Very comfortable and nicely laid out, there are four beds, a dining table and a kitchen.

Relaxing after a long hike.  Our dinner consisted of "Dehydes" (just add water), actually rather tasty. There are a good variety of meals such as Beef and Green Bean, Spaghetti Bolognaise, Tuna Mornay and everyone's favourite, Lamb Casserole. Nichol also managed to make a Cheese Cake.  Not the type you are pobably thinking, but very edible when there is not much else to chose from.  Once again, Mike and Dave opted to Bivvy outside, while the 3 trainees slept in the comfort of the hut.

The next day, we had the trek back to Davis via Marine Plains Apple.

 

Inside Marine Plains Apple where we stopped for lunch and I managed to have a small power nap.

 

Crossing Ellis Fjord from Marine Plains Apple. 

This was to be one of the last crossings on sea ice before all sea ice travel was closed.  Without being able to cross here, means the long way around back to Watts Hut and crossing at the Ellis rapids.

All up over the 2 and half days by GPS we had walked just over 50kms.  Walking back into the station, the only thought I had was planning our next trip. 

Field Travel Training Part 1

For those people that are Survival Trained, the next step is Field Travel Training.  It's mandatory for Winter Personnel, but can also be done by Summer Personnel who are keen like me, to get away from the Station and enjoy some time hiking in the Vestfold Hills.

Our trip started on the 22nd of December and we caught a red and white to Trajer Ridge Melon.

Trajer Ridge from the air.

Trajer Ridge Melon

Looking inside the Melon

Mike inside the Melon with all the luxuries you need.  The wine bottles were empty and only used for holding candles.  We stayed the night here after walking around the ridge and up near the plateau most of the afternoon.  Dinner was too good for hiking, we had steak and veges, cooked by Mike our Field Training Officer.  His rewared and our other Field Training Officer Dave was to bivvy outside the melon for the night, while we enjoyed the cosiness of the melon.

Learning to traverse ice slopes.

Nichol talking to his girlfriend on his satphone.  In the background you can make out the plateau.

My camping buddies for this trip

Standing in front of a "Wind Scour".

Ice overhang. 

It was above this cliff that I ventured a little close to the edge for Mike's liking and for good reason.  Lesson learnt: If you can't see the terrain on the other slope stay right away.

 The very eastern edge of the Vestold Hills.  Behind me looking like cloud is the plateau and the real Antarctica  Not really interesting if white is not your colour. 

 

"Ice Climbing"