12 November 2011 The AGO Team

Meet the Engineers

I was greeted at McMurdo Station by Bob Melville and Andy Stillinger, the two engineers from New Jersey Institute of Technology who I will be spending two weeks with at a remote site outside of the South Pole. As I stepped off the Terra Bus, they were there with smiles and a famous green notebook at McMurdo called the green brain. Bob told me it's called the green brain because by the end of your stay in Antarctica, the notebook has all of your thoughts and your mind is empty!

Bob and Andy flew in to McMurdo a week before me and will be leaving for the South Pole and beyond in a few days. I will be meeting up with them in mid-December at the South Pole before we fly out to an AGO site. To celebrate our reunion we ate dinner together at the cafeteria in McMurdo. There I met Susan Whitley, our field guide who will keep us safe, and other impressive scientists.

What's an AGO?

AGO stands for Automatic Geophysical ObservatoryA location used for observing terrestrial and/or celestial events.. They are 8' by 16' boxes that have instruments on them which record data about the magnetic field and other information about space weather. The AGOs are powered by solar panels, a wind turbine and a back up system of batteries. There are six AGO sites in Antarctica. Bob and Andy will be going to a few of them before I meet up with them to likely go to AGO 1. The instruments at the AGOs are designed to help scientists have a better understanding of how solar wind affects the magnetic field, as well as the ionosphere.

How does the Sun affect the Earth?

The Sun's outer atmosphere is called the corona. Solar wind is constantly blowing off the corona at high speeds (around 400 kilometers/second) and high temperatures--it is a plasma. Solar wind is composed of a stream of charged particles (mostly protons and electrons) that are emitted outwards through the solar system. When these charged particles hit the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere (the ionosphere), they can create aurorae or magnetic storms. When there is a solar event that spits out a lot of solar wind, it is possible to see the effects of this if you are near the North or South Pole at night. They create beautiful shimmers of light called aurora (plural: aurorae). Magnetic storms are events that disturb our magnetic field.

AGO Versus McMurdo

I feel very lucky to get to go to both the AGO site and stay in McMurdo Station. They are very different places. Here are some of the basic differences between the two:

AGO 1 Site

• Hundreds of miles from the nearest humans (425 miles to be exact!)
• No animals or insects
• Home cooked meals from packed food
• No internet connections--SatelliteAn object placed in orbit around the earth to collect or transmit information. Phones only!
• A beautiful view: miles of ice and snow
• Sleep in a tent

McMurdo Site

• Surrounded by people! (Around 1100 people are here right now)
• Birds and sealife (For example, the Skua bird will try to steal your meal if you take it outside)
• Cafeteria style dining
• Internet and phone connections
• A somewhat dirty town: buildings, tractors, and dirt!
• Sleep in a dorm

Questions

Would you rather stay at McMurdo Station or an AGO site? Why?

What details do you think are important to plan a trip somewhere cold and remote like an AGO site? What would you prepare to bring? What would you leave behind at home?

Math Connections

1. If solar wind travels at a speed of 400 kilometers per second, how many miles per hour is that? (Hint: There are roughly 1.62 kilometers in 1 mile).

2. If the distance from the sun to the Earth is 149, 597,890 kilometers, how long would it take solar wind to reach the Earth in seconds? Minutes? Hours? Days? Years?