A Busy Week

The weather's packed up at Scott Base in the last couple of days- wind up to 50kts, although the temps get warm when a blizzard hits- it's only -3.5°C outside at the moment. But it's meant we've been confined to base, which is good for catching up on emails, and data processing, and photo editing!

It's been a pretty busy week this week. We are supporting some French scientists who are measuring gravity at certain points around the Ross Sea Region, and one of the points they want to do really precise measurements at is Scott Base. This requires setting up a portable hut, with no floor, and heating it to between 15 and 25°C. So quite a bit of our time has been spent sorting that out.

We also completed the Scott Base tide gauge calibration, and having processed the data, it's all looking good. The other task we completed this week was a survey at Shackletons Nimrod hut at Cape Royds. There's a Adelie penguin colony there, and with the sea-ice edge so close this year, there are also a lot of Emperor penguins wandering around (which I'll put the photos up for in a seperate post.

So when we're not working and the weathers good, I've tried to get out and do some of the recreation activities. So there's some photos of a walk Rachelle and I did around the Ob Hill Loop. There's also a couple from the Pressure Ridges in front of base.

Not all science in Antarctica is undertaken in the field- some is done in labs back at Scott Base. I made friends with some of the scientists here from Otago Uni, and have thrown in a couple of photos of one of them cutting up a worm..And there's some big traverses going across to New Harbour and Granite Harbour, so I've put in some photos of the loaded sleds for those.
Oh, and there's also a photo of the wind turbines being worked on, which are being installed above Scott Base. Hopefully will have some more photos in the next week or so- they're being put up now- weather permitting.