South Pole Telescopes

Weather this time of year can be and has been very erratic. We have seen temperature swings from -107F to -45F and winds in excess of 24 knots the past few weeks. It's hard to see in the below image, but there are snow drifts as high as 20 feet in some areas.

Although we cannot yet see the sun, it's inching ever closer to us and is scheduled to break the horizon on or about the 22nd of this month. We are all looking forward to it. At this point darkness will not fall again at the South Pole until March. 24 hr sunlight is here!

South Pole Telescopes:

There are three microwave telescopes here at the South Pole, at this time all of them are observing the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in a "clean" area of space that allows them to peer deep into the universe's past without too much interference from galaxy clusters. The 10 meter telescope seen far left in the image below also surveys galaxy clusters during certain times of the year. By observing the CMB these telescopes are looking for clues about the early formation of the universe when it was less than a fraction of a second old and theorized to have expanded or inflated exponentially during that tiny fraction of a second. These telescopes are looking for signs of gravitational waves that are theorized to have been caused during that period of rapid expansion. Cool stuff!

Next Post? The Neutrino Telescope