Tuesday and Wednesday, December 26-27, 2000

Tuesday was a very strange day. After the holiday, work returned; yet my family just started celebrating Christmas. As California is twenty-one hours behind our time, I called home to wish my family a Merry Christmas - it was 11:00 AM Pacific time.

Yes, you can call home from the South Pole. However, the connection only works for some of the time. The phone call goes over the Internet and we only have an Internet connection about 8 hours a day. The cost is the same as any national call. The connection is a little one-sided. We hear fairly well with only a few delays. Unfortunately, our words are often cut out as we use the maximum capacity of the satellite. But it is good to be in touch. A new satellite dish is being installed. It will lengthen our communication time.

Yesterday and today, I was working on measuring the electrical noise on the DOMs. After struggling with the problem, I believe that I found a way to make the measurement. My preliminary results show that the noise is not that significant and that some high frequency pulses can easily be rejected.

Last evening, we saw a spectacular site around the sun. A halo completely surrounded the Sun. As the Sun's light streams through ice crystals, the halo forms. If you look carefully at the halo, you can see a rainbow band. As the sun is so bright, this phenomenon is very hard to photograph. In one figure you can see the bottom of the halo. This area is in the clean air sector. As winds blow to the pole and there is no life within two thousand miles, it contains some of the cleanest air on Earth. In the other photograph, you can see the top of the halo. This picture was taken next to the entrance of the Dome.

There is another solar phenomenon called "Sun Dogs". These are spots of light that often appear with the halo. So far I am not seen them. I hope that I can photograph them before I go back home.

We just heard that there are two more Antarctic explorers trudging to us. They should be here in a few days.

The temperature is getting colder. It is now -25 F. The wind chill has gone down to -45 F. However, it is still pleasant going outside.

Howard Matis
South Pole, Antarctica

Next day
Index for Howard's trip