first sunrise

Our first sunrise was on 19 August and above the horizon for about an hour. Since McMurdo is tucked between some ridges and hills, the only place we could view the actual sun was atop one of the hills.

Jason, one of my friends who monitors and manages many of the science experiments down here brought a group of us up to Arrival Heights. Unfortunately, as you can see in this photo, the sun did not actually show us his shiny face. The clouds covered our excitement.

Jason did explain a bit of the research that is done from Arrival Heights. There are some devices monitoring the auroras and another looking for clouds. The project that caught my attention was the one monitoring lightening strikes all over the world. Not only can this device measure the lightening, but it can also detect a space shuttle launch! That is some sensitive hardware!