{"id":42,"date":"2016-09-15T22:08:08","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T22:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/southpoleozone2016\/?p=42"},"modified":"2016-09-21T22:40:17","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T22:40:17","slug":"night-at-the-south-pole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/southpoleozone\/2016\/09\/15\/night-at-the-south-pole\/","title":{"rendered":"Night at the South Pole"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Patrick Culls,\u00a0CIRES and NOAA scientist, from Boulder, September 15<\/strong><\/p>\n

From 2008-2009, I spent a year living at the bottom of the world.\u00a0 I worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which sits only a hundred yards from the geographic pole marker.<\/p>\n

The short summer season was a rush of activity, with science teams coming and going and regular flights bringing mail and fresh food.\u00a0 But, once we said our goodbyes and that final airplane disappeared on the horizon, my crew of 43 people settled in for the next nine\u00a0months.\u00a0I look back fondly on my time there: I made a few lifelong friends, the majority of the crew got along quite well, I learned to appreciate excellent board games, I read lots of books, and I spent countless hours under a pristine and glorious sky.<\/p>\n

Once the Sun set, time seemed to shift to another scale.\u00a0 Without sunlight to signal the passing of time, it was instead a two-week period dominated by dark skies, the bright swath of the Milky Way, and glorious aurora giving way to the shockingly bright two weeks centered on each full moon.\u00a0 For me, a full moon reflecting off of unending snow was as good as daylight.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t need a headlamp and could see for miles.<\/p>\n

But the periods in between the appearance of the moon was what I cherished most.\u00a0 The darker it was, the brighter the stars.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know it at first, but I was one of the lucky people because I actually worked outside of the main station.\u00a0 Every day I put on my cold weather gear and walked the flag line out to NOAA\u2019s Atmospheric Research Observatory to take air samples and check on instruments.\u00a0 Halfway there tended to be the time when my eyes became adjusted to the dark and I would usually realize that what I thought was a cloud was really an aurora fluttering away above me.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how many times I stopped walking and simply lay down on my back and watched in amazement until just when\u00a0I needed to hurry back inside before body parts began to freeze.\u00a0 One of the hardest parts of my stay was the month \u00a0leading up to South Pole sunrise, when I slowly watched the stars fade away and wondered if I would ever again see a night sky that compared.<\/p>\n

Here’s a video of the South Pole aurora that I took during my stay :<\/p>\n