W rap up warm’ has long been a mantra among astronomers everywhere, given ‘ that so much observation of the cosmos has to take place out in the open and at night. However, if you’ve ever grumbled about surviving a few hours outside during a cold British winter night, just remember it could be worse – you could be in Antarctica, or even at the South Pole.
“I still remember the first time I flew down there,” says Kael Hanson, director of the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It was early November, which was just when the station opens for most people, and it was about -45 degrees Celsius (-49 degrees Fahrenheit). It was quite a shock just to get off the aeroplane and be out in that cold. It’s blinding bright too, unbelievably bright, because you have all this snow and everything is reflecting in your face. It’s also at altitude. The first couple of days you find yourself catching your breath. Sometimes you wake up sort of gasping for air, just because of the altitude. It’s an incredibly extreme environment to live in.”
Extreme it might be, but that’s what makes Antarctica and the South Pole such an ideal spot for setting up your telescope. According to theoretical physicist Francis Halzen, also of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the South Pole now ranks with the grand research laboratories such as Fermilab and CERN. Astronomers ideally want somewhere cold, dark, remote and dry. Antarctica, and the South Pole in particular,
