Panoramas

These pictures were taken, like the rest of the shots, with my camera, but then aligned using autopano-sift, stitched together using the hugin front-end to the Panotools library, and then blended using enblend. Some final cropping and touch ups are done with The GIMP, and, lastly, the images are converted from TIFFs to something more Web-friendly using ImageMagick.

Panoramas for Mon 2011-02-14 09:49:45 UTC

(19895x2497, 7203.84 kb) Lake Te Anau and the Te Anau townsite, with the mountains of Fiordland in the distance.

Panoramas for Fri 2011-02-11 10:59:59 UTC

(14281x2182, 4784.13 kb) Milford Sound. From left we have: the Devil's Armchair, the Llawrenny Peaks (in the distance, up the gully), Mount Phillips, Simbad Gully, Mitre Peak, the Sound, the Lion (distance), and the lower slope of Cascade Peak at right. Below the Devil's Armchair is the Milford Hotel, and the tree'd spit to the right of that contains the airstrip.

Panoramas for Thu 2011-02-10 11:10:00 UTC

(6897x2578, 3115.01 kb) Dunedin Train Station.

(23882x2399, 10200.06 kb) A 360° panorama from the middle of Curio Bay.

(10880x2482, 6675.46 kb) Curio Bay.

Panoramas for Tue 2011-02-08 22:12:47 UTC

(10396x2566, 4246.53 kb) A very wet Mackenzie Valley.

(15545x2157, 6895.62 kb) Lake Pukaki (left) at the end of the Hydro Canal (right).

(10990x2493, 6882.30 kb) Mueller Lake below low cloud.

(13184x2542, 5870.59 kb) Aoraki from the Hooker Valley.

(7199x2468, 4547.58 kb) Looking down the Hooker Valley past the second swing bridge.

Panoramas for Sun 2011-02-06 09:00:08 UTC

(11120x3596, 6742.02 kb) Caroline Bay, Timaru. The war memorial is the ring of pillars half way down the path. The rose garden is to the right.

(7625x3708, 4235.26 kb) The view from the amphitheatre.

(8654x2571, 6715.39 kb) Trevor Griffiths Rose Garden.

(16681x2434, 6910.98 kb) Lake Tekapo, with the town at its south end, from the top of Mount John.

(8769x2457, 4005.89 kb) Looking north from Mount John. The difference in colouration between Lake Alexandra at left and Lake Tekapo at right is profound.

Panoramas for Fri 2011-02-04 05:21:05 UTC

(24708x2453, 10823.68 kb) One last 360 degree view of South Pole from the Dark Sector Road. There are stitching issues.

(8264x2408, 3405.82 kb) South Pole Station from Peligroso.

(7438x2440, 2520.06 kb) Winter Quarters Bay, where the USNS Richard G. Matthiessen awaits lading, with the Royal Society Range on the horizon.

(11021x2500, 5905.41 kb) Chin-Lin checks over the operations in Winter Quarters Bay from Hut Point. The prominent hill at centre is, of course, Ob Hill.

(6798x2423, 2864.13 kb) Scott's Discovery Hut at Hut Point. It was a pre-fab outback cabin from Australia. Apparently it works quite well at keeping things cool, which wasn't really what they were after.

(23976x2406, 8452.10 kb) A 360° view from the end of Hut Point, where Vince's Cross would be had I not cleverly removed it from this image. At left, looking roughly west, you can see the inbound icebreaker on the horizon. Hills on the left are known as Danger Slopes (where Vince fell to his death); on the other side of White Dome, the hills are known as Arrival Heights. Discovery Hut is in the midground, with Winter Quarters Bay behind it, and McMurdo behind that. Then you can see Ob Hill, behind which is White Island, and next is Black Island, with Royal Society Range at right.

(10486x2497, 3767.30 kb) The icebreaker parked in McMurdo Sound, with crazy quantities of fata morgana on the horizon. This was taken from the "beach" down below the Station. At left is Cape Armitage, the foot of Ob Hill. At right is Hut Point, where you can see the roof of the hut itself.

(13155x2568, 7564.29 kb) PAX redeploying from McMurdo to Christchurch on a mostly empty C-17. This was the view from my seat, shortly after take-off. This is why you always opt for the cargo seating along the sides if possible: infinite leg room.

(6537x4474, 5984.26 kb) And the view noseward. Still lots and lots of room. Also some panorama generated re-arrangement of heads.

Panoramas for Wed 2011-01-26 15:18:40 UTC

(7401x1664, 2543.62 kb) A mildly fish-eyed view of Science taken from the mezzanine stairs. Science is one of the larger rooms in the Elevated Station, but it is well utilised. In the far corner at left is the Met Office (that is, the weather guys), next is the large IceCube area. Straight ahead, under the clock, is the SPT area. In front of that is where we and BICEP2 have set up shop. (You can just see the top of our desk.) Over on the right is the domain of the atmospheric scientists.

Panoramas for Mon 2011-01-24 01:38:07 UTC

(23893x2233, 7367.68 kb) A 360° panorama taken from Grid South of the Elevated Station. Most of what you see are storage berms, but we also have, starting from left:

Spoolhenge, the left-over spools used to ship the the IceCube strands, stacked up. If you were paying attention during my last trip down here, you've already seen one of these. They're not small.
The two blue, semi-circular ski huts towards which Jamie and Sarah are walking. They're named Fred and Wilma.
Directly south is the high-frequency antenna field, and then, partially obscured by a berm, the RADOME (radar dome).
The Elevated Station, at right, with the Jamesways of Summer Camp in front of it.

(13515x2403, 4646.91 kb) The two Stations: At left is the Elevated Station where I live, eat and sometimes work. The cylindrical metal structure on the right end of the station is the Beer Can. It connects the Elevated Station to the Underground Station. The two quanset-like buildings you see in the centre, mostly burried by snow are the entrances to the Underground Station, which are the left-over parts of 2nd Pole (the "old" station which more people are familiar with: the one that used to have the geodesic dome). They weren't originally underground, but have been buried by accumulation since they were first constructed. These are mostly utility structures and house things like fuel storage, the power plant, the vehicle shop, &c. At right, past the row of snowmobiles, is the cryo facility, one of the few outbuilings which remains in use over winter. It's used to store gasses and liquid cryogens (like liquid helium) for use by scientists.

Panoramas for Tue 2011-01-18 22:57:18 UTC

(15087x2034, 5618.69 kb) The view from Destination Zulu. The bins on the right are trash sorting bins.

(7036x2579, 3015.68 kb) Overlooking the Viper ground shield.

Panoramas for Sun 2011-01-16 23:21:14 UTC

(16181x2173, 51148.80 kb) The view of the marathon from the second floor balcony.

Panoramas for Fri 2011-01-14 23:31:30 UTC

(12325x2149, 3645.44 kb) Arrivals and departures at the flight terminal (aka Peligroso).

Panoramas for Thu 2011-01-13 23:18:44 UTC

(10573x2502, 34201.60 kb) A view of the outbuildings Grid South of the Elevated Station from the top of the snow pile near Destination Alpha. The edge of the Elevation Station is at extreme left. The next building on left, with all the garage doors is the cryogenics facility, one of the few out buildings kept open in winter. Behind it is the waste facility. Most of the Jamesways (the long, semi-circular tents) form Summer Camp, overflow housing in use during the summer. A lot of the rest of the stuff you can see are storage berms. The white radar domes can just be discerned against the whiteout conditions. To the right is the aircraft refuelling yard, and the passenger (PAX) terminal. At extreme right, on the other side of the fuel line, is the IceCube drill camp.

Panoramas for Wed 2011-01-12 19:45:57 UTC

(1848x3651, 1068.03 kb) A look into the Viper ground shield.

Panoramas for Sun 2011-01-09 16:06:02 UTC

(7614x5127, 3868.67 kb) It's hard to take a picture of SPT's primary from such close quarters, so I did this instead.

(10785x2398, 3511.30 kb) A view of the Dark Sector and the Station from atop SPT.

Panoramas for Sat 2011-01-07 19:24:00 UTC

(9967x5514, 10854.40 kb) The view from the second floor balcony of the Windsor. At left is Cranmer square. The Windsor is on Armagh Street.

(5930x2504, 3240.96 kb) The view from my seat on the C17.

(8479x2458, 2908.16 kb) Arriving at Pegasus.

(11572x2505, 4114.43 kb) The view from Pegasus.

(11293x3193, 7159.81 kb) On the LC-130. The pile in front of us is our carry-on. The next pile is the crew's gear. At the back, on the ramp, is our checked luggage and a few other things for Keck.

(6299x4309, 4958.21 kb) Looking the other way in my berth. Some of the stuff listed above which were not shown now is.

(22671x2239, 7944.19 kb) A 360 degree panorama from the Dark Sector road, where it intersects the aircraft taxiway. The cut is roughly Grid Northeast. The first building starting from the left, just right of an antenna mast is ARO, the Atmospheric Research Observatory, at the edge of the Clean Air Sector. Then there's a bulldozer grading the ARO road. Then comes another antenna, and then the Ceremonial South Pole (surrounded by national flags).

A black line in the snow right of the Ceremonial Pole is the fuel line; then comes the elevated station. There are a large number of support buildings right of the Elevated Station, ending with the radar dome. On the far side of these is the Quiet Sector. Then comes the ski-way (ie. runway), which marks the edge of the Dark Sector.

Most of the next stuff is storage up on snow berms before we get to the Ice Cube Laboratory, followed by a generator building and then the Dark Sector Laboratory (DSL) containing the imposing South Pole Telescope, and the much smaller BICEP2. Next is the Martin A. Pomerantz Observatory (MAPO) where Keck is being built. The large orange flags in the Dark Sector indicate the locations of the Ice Cube strands. At right a the black flags (which indicate danger) mark out the location of Old Pole (the station built in the 1950s and now buried). The red tents on the horizon is the Designated Camping Area, where tourists are allowed to stay.