Lidar Exploration at the Bottom of the World

Over the past few weeks, the team has been hard at work preparing for the upcoming winter and strategizing for the refurbishment season ahead. While the challenges may seem daunting, the months ahead promise exciting opportunities to enhance our system and the quality of the data it can produce. Cloudy skies persisted from Christmas to New Year’s, allowing the team to perform flash lamp replacements for the lasers and make individual progress on their lab-related studies. Meanwhile, Dr. Chu focused on writing and tackling the challenge of removing residual metal from one of our sodium cells brought from Boulder. After disassembling and reassembling the oven twice with much care, Dr. Chu was able to successfully bake off the metal on the two ovens coated with sodium. Through the holidays, everyone worked diligently to accomplish shared and personal goals for the trip. Kamen and I (Shay) are Antarctic first timers, so most of our training thus far has been done through shadowing Ari and Jack, the winter-over Science Lead and Engineering Lead of 2025, who have both been working hard to prepare for the upcoming year. While the weather was cloudy, the pair changed the flash lamps for our pulsed alexandrite lasers and walked me and Kamen through the procedure.

While strolling to Hut Point on Christmas Eve, the historic site where McMurdo Sound’s Heroic Age explorers once lived, we were delightfully surprised by the presence of 13 Adelie penguins! This was Ari’s and my first time seeing penguins here, so it was quite a special Christmas occasion! It is an absolute must to keep distance from the penguins here, as mandated by the Agreed Measures for the Conservation of Antarctic Fauna and Flora within the Antarctic Treaty that all McMurdo inhabitants are required to follow. Despite the distance, it was amazing to see the birds enjoying their natural habitat.

With the new year came clear skies, and the team ran both the Fe Boltzmann and Na Doppler systems for the first several days of 2025. The run was not only a good omen of the year to come, but the team took it as an opportunity to improve the photon counts of the systems with some much-needed refurbishments including two negative lenses on the Fe lidar beam expanders and one positive cylindrical lens for the PAL system’s second harmonic generation. These refurbishments were much needed and yielded an increase in the received signals of over 50%! Due to these refurbishments, the run was a success, and we were finally able to shut down and get some much-needed rest after over 100 hours of data on January 4th, 2025!

On New Year’s Eve Dr. Chu was generous enough to give all the team members gifts and handwritten personalized letters for the end of 2024, and the group reflected and shared their research goals for 2025. The group also partook in the tradition of taking New Year’s Eve pictures up on top of the laboratory at Arrival Heights while the lasers were running before heading down to McMurdo Station for the annual “Icestock” musical festival for the McMurdo Station inhabitants.

As we welcome 2025, our team is filled with optimism and resolve for the year ahead. The coming months will undoubtedly bring challenges, but they also hold immense potential for growth, scientific discovery, and camaraderie. With clear skies and promising data collection already underway, we are eager to build on the progress made in 2024 and continue refining our systems and research. The sense of purpose and community we share here at McMurdo, combined with the unique privilege of working in this extraordinary environment, inspires us to embrace the opportunities this year will bring. Here’s to a year of achievement, resilience, and unforgettable experiences on and off “the Ice.”

Happy New Year from the Bottom of the World,
Shay Mayer (Undergraduate Researcher).