Halley’s Cometh

Right, first up. Massive thanks to Jon at System X and Nicola Sherwin at GEM Distribution, without those two I never would’ve received my Wii and I probably would’ve killed myself with boredom. There’s nothing like phoning up one of your friends and asking him to search the planet for a console, just so you can shoot zombies from the comfort of your chair in Antarctica, with the rest of the base cheering you on (or laughing at Bryan trying to work the controller).

We liek bowling!

Dave’s technique … More camp than a row of tents

Wide sweeping actions from the Irish Pin Smasher

Praying wont help Hannah…

I’m off shopping, and Paddy tries to convince to me get some ‘fags and booze’

This is what happens when you leave your camera in the lounge…

The git.

A big shout out to past, present and future Antarctic Heroes this week. We’ve reached Midwinter and we’re still alive… yay! Its usually the time of year when I miss my friends the most, and especially one person in particular. Hope you’re all having fun and celebrating the equinox … you bunch of northern hemisphere softies.

Ohh, it’s a bit chilly outside…

The sun said goodbye to us on the 1st of May, and it wont reappear for another 105 days. Shame really, I kinda liked being able to see stuff. As always, we celebrated in true Halley tradition by burning lots of food on a bbq, but this year had a twist … I was cooking! Well, I was poisoning the rest of the base tbh.

Goodbye Sun, hellooooo Moon. That was the only bit of cloud in the whole sky, typical

Lance lowers the flag

The two most important people on base! One keeps the internet working and the other one makes sure he’s doing his job

The sun wasn’t happy with it’s goodbye, so it waited a while and fired a few high energy photons at the molecules in the upper atmosphere and made em all shiny.

The BART with something green in the background

I got bored with the Aurora (seen one, seen em all) so I took some of the stars instead

And here’s Jupiter and three of the Galilean moons. I’m thinking Io, Ganymede and Callisto

Not a bad day…

…because it is close to us.

It’s a bit squished

The Simpson

My HF antennas

A few nights ago

As always, more here

Gallery

We’ve had a few nights of aurora lately, nothing spectacular but fricken-lights-in-the-sky for chrissakes so it’s worth getting the camera out

The rest were blurry because I’m stupid and messed around with the focus, even though it was fine. I’ll never learn.

Gallery

When the aurora shouts went out I was sceptical, it’s still too early and its not dark enough I said … Hah, I was wrong. I stepped out onto the platform and looked up, and saw a damn fine light show. Lots of movement with greens and blues waving directly above.

I ran in to get my camera, but by the time I emerged wearing 80 layers of clothing, the aurora had virtually disappeared. A really bright moon didn’t help matters either…

Bloody moon. Shoo, you’re ruining my art

The Piggott surrounded by a weak aurora after the camera came out

The camera catches a low orbitting satellite

A few familiar constellations… Can you spot the southern cross?