By:Ella Derbyshire (grannydoc) on March 19, 2009
Tags: project , ice , neutrinos , pole , south , antarctica , cube , icecube

http://GigapanMagazine.org vol 1 issue 2

Contributors: Camille Parisel and Erik Verhagen

It is the day before sunset at the South Pole. IceCube Drill Camp is deserted and cold.

During the summers of 2004 to 2008, hundreds of scientists and ice drillers were at the South Pole for this massive project. Their multiyear goal is to complete a huge neutrino detector under the Antarctic ice. When they are done, they will have drilled 80 holes and placed in each of them a string of 60 light-detecting modules (DOM’s). The 4800 DOM's will be a single 1 cubic kilometer telescope in the clear ice deep beneath the South Pole.

We are approaching winter 2009. The drills have stopped. Nobody is deploying DOM’s and most of the IceCube crew has left. Today only 2 IceCubers remain at the South Pole. They will stay here through the winter, working on the computers as they gather data from flashes of light passing through the ice.

If you were here at the South Pole this summer, you might be wondering about the location and the size of the drill camp. It has been moved a little towards the northwest, and some of the buildings, most noticeably the TOS, and the reels of hose and wire have been moved to winter storage on the berms. Once the sun returns, the buildings and materials will be dragged back to the drill camp and everything will be in place to start a new drilling season by December.

When you look at this icy landscape, notice the position of the sun in the sky. Tomorrow the sun will sink below the horizon and the South Pole will fall into the deepening twilight, waiting for the darkness of winter to begin.

The 62 images of this panorama were photographed with a Nikon D80 and stitched with Autopano Pro.

Date Taken: March 19, 2009
Date Added: March 20, 2009
Bookmarked: 1 time
Total Views: 2519 views
Gear: Nikon D80
Snapshots: 16
Size: 0.18 gigapixels
Field of View: 165.0 degrees wide, degrees high