| Discussing cryostat alignment. |
| Mark, Marco and Gaelen at their computers. |
| Installing the transmitters. |
| Marie checks to see if the transmitters turn on. |
| C-clamp based mounting brackets for the helium transfer tube. |
| Solar arrays in their shipping bracket. |
| BLAST mostly assembled. |
| Out behind the payload bays, they're drilling a deep hole so that the ANITA team can place a fake source down in the ice to test their instrument. |
| Mark waves a dewar of nitrogen (formerly Chris's coffee mug) in front of the cryostat. |
| The bottom of the helium thumper (being held upside down). A helium thumper is a hollow metal tube which is inserted into a liquid helium dewar to check the level. The pressure oscilations which are set up inside the tube due to the warm metal coming into contact with the cold helium liquid and vapour above it change whether the bottom of the tube is submerged in liquid or not. These changes can be felt by an experienced cryologist who places his or her thumb over the top end of the tube, and then measuring at what position the change happens, corresponding to the level of liquid in the dewar. This one has just come out of a helium dewar, and its lower part is cold enough to condense the small bit of moisture in the highbay air. |
| Barth routes cables on the gondola. |
| Gaelen and Matt mount the motorised valves on top of the cryostat. |
| Weighing the gondola. |
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| (6198x1017, 2894.18 kb) Whiteout conditions looking north to east from the highbay. If you could see it, Erebus would be at left. | |
| Our gondola table, for aligning the coarse sensors outside. |
| A closer view of the table. It's not clear to me why someone has writen "goat" all over it. |
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| (4544x1344, 2837.18 kb) Looking towards Hut Point Peninsula, where clearer skies can be seen. | |
| "Shuttle Tex" drives us back to base in Ivan at the end of the day. |
| The view towards the back of the bus. The bus is now completely full. |
| Coming up to the transition in Ivan. |
| Watching blue flags of the Willy Field fuel line pass by in Ivan on the ride out to LDB Camp. |
| Visibility is low today. Here's a picture of Mt. Erebus. |
| Here's Ob Hill. |
| And this one is White Island. |