all photos

[11/13(Mon) My calibrator measurements]

8AM-Noon Put my calibrator in front of the telescope to measure the orientations of our polarization detectors. Denis had modified a few things on my calibrator, so it was a little tricky.

1-4PM Had a quick lunch and filled the telescope w/ liquid helium for the last time and did a star pointing procedure using the optical camera to determine the telescope's pointing. The sky looked nice and blue, but on my camera I saw lots of snow, but I was able to find all ~15 stars in the daylight.

4-5PM I had to return to the station to do my "house mouse" job of cleaning my floor's bathroom (happens to be women's). I get to clean the bathroom with 2 of my neighbors every Monday at 4pm.

5PM Stopped by the Green House to help out, but nobody was there.

[11/14(Tu) Distinguished Visitors: Kiwon and Evan]

11:45 Two of our other graduate student team members ( Kiwon and Evan) arrived!

PM Also on today's flight were 4 people from the U.S. National Science Board. We showed them our telescope.

5:30-7PM Power yoga in the TV lounge. This lounge has lots of nice new yoga matts!

8-10PM Volleyball.

~Midnight: Couldn't fall asleep for the 1st time.

[11/15(We) Another calibrator test]

3AM Woke up and found my sister Seika's homepage!

8AM Teleconference w/ the rest of the team in California.

10-11AM I learned how to drive the Pisten Bully, although I probably won't get a chance to use it... :(

11AM-5PM Re-ran my calibrator measurements, and we re-tried the other measurement for the last time before taking down the telescope.

9PM Went to bed early so that I can wake up to take over the early-morning shift for our final measurements.

[11/16(Th) Bad weather]

2:15AM Woke up and went to the telescope since Kiwon and Evan had given up on the measurements for now. The weather was very bad, with ~40 km/h wind! I walked backward to the lab so that the wind doesn't blow on me. Overnight, there was a whole new array of buildings in front of ours -- they are for the Ice Cube project.

1:30PM I finally went back to the station for lunch. The Moon is supposed to rise today (and stay up for the next half a month), but it was still very cloudy. It's very crescent now anyways.

3:45PM-5PM I have joined the "Trauma Team" at the station for the summer, and we had our first tour of the Radio Frequency buildings to learn about the emergency systems there.

5-7PM Went back to the telescope to run more measurements.

8-11PM Tonight was the Open Mic night, like last year. It was really nice. I espeically like a sea chanty that Webster sang. Tonight inspired me to listen to music again.

[11/17(Fr) Telescope take-down!]

9AM-6PM Today we took apart our telescope and brought it down from its mount to make some modifications. It was one of the riskiest operations this year, but Pete's design for unlaoding the telescope worked very well.
When we stepped out of the lab at the end of the day, there was a whole rainbow halo around the Sun, and a 2nd fainter but larger halo, also with the rainbow color. I took a photo (this pages's background), but could only fit the 1st halo.

8-10PM After an exciting and successful day, Darren, Kiwon, and I played volleyball. Evan was not feeling too well (and slept through the afternoon of excitement)...

[11/18(Sa) Relax]

AM Before we can open up the telescope to work on it, we had to wait for the inside to cool from the liquid helium temperature (4 Kelvin) to well above freezing (~10°C), so took it easy this morning.

PM Went to check up on the telescope and reviewed the unloading procedure to document it for the future.

8-11PM There was a showing of previous years' South Pole Independent Film Festival films. Most of them are very funny with inside jokes. Having spent 2 months here last year, the films were even funnier this time. It inspired me to try to film something, too...

2AM Afterwards, Kiwon, Evan, Webster and I played ping pong, pool, and talked a lot about our telescope BICEP. I was very tired, but it was good.

[11/19(Su) Volleyball!]

8AM As I requested, Nacchan called me to wake me up -- thanks :)

noon-3PM Right after brunch, I went to the telescope to check on the warming progress.

3-6PM Darren, Kiwon, and I played 3 hours of volleyball w/ ~10 others. At some point, there were as many as 16 people so that we had to take turns to play 6 on each side, but today's volleyball was the most fun ever.

[11/20(Mo) South Pole]