We are past mid-winter now.

Mid-winter day is the premiere holiday in Antarctica. The various stations will send greetings to each other to celebrate the middle of the “longest night.”

Special mid-winter dinner celebrations were held at Scott Base and McMurdo, in which the chefs went all out to put on a suitable feast.

We have finally had a few good aurora displays. I filled up about 60Gigs of hard drive space with photos in one afternoon when I was out at Black Island.

Here are a few photos from the last few weeks…

The fancy table layouts for mid-winter dinner at McMurdo Station.

The crowd gathering for the feast

Ice crystals in the air at McMurdo after mid-winter dinner creates the illusion of the
floodlights pointing straight up in the air.

Moon over Observation Hill, McMurdo Station.
The cross on top is the memorial marker to Robert Scott and his men.

The Milky Way in the sky above the Black Island Satellite Station. This is a shot from
the start of a time-lapse sequence to capture the galaxy moving across the sky...

A few minutes later an aurora display took place in the middle of the sequence, when
I would have actually preferred dark skies. But the auroras looked pretty good too.

The smaller satellite dish radome at Black Island lit up from inside, with an aurora
in the background.
The streaks of light in the sky are satellites passing overhead.

That's me, standing on the helicopter landing pad at Black Island (helicopters do not
fly here in winter).  I stood still there for about 10 minutes to get a time-lapse photo
sequence of the aurora with me in it.

Looking north after lunch. The lights of McMurdo can be seen at the base of Mt Erebus.
The glow in the sky is from a combination of the sun and the moon behind a cloud just
to the right of Erebus. An aurora is also on the right of the picture.

Moon and auroras over Ross Island, as seen from Black Island

Looking up the microwave tower at Black Island, a composit shot of the stars moving
over a period of a couple of hours.
Notice how celestial south pole is only slightly offset from the top of the tower.
The green bits in the sky are frm some auroras that passed through.

Ice crystals growing on the windows at Black Island.