Arrival Heights

Snow-dusted Antarctic terrain

"It looks like the moon...or something."

Harriet sat next to me on the bench in the van, and I could hear her smooth, deep voice over my shoulder. We were squished in a row of four on a seat probably meant for three, and we were gazing past one another out the windows. The extraterrestrial terrain was dusted with snow as our van rattled up the hill.

Sensor antennae at Arrival Heights

We drove up the slope and stepped out at a place called Arrival Heights, on the ridge standing high above McMurdo Station. The wind whipped around us, swirling snow and obscuring the view as we stepped out of the vans. When I peaked out from my hood, I could see we were surrounded by a field of antennas, and a large white ball stood atop a compact building on the flat top of the hill.

The door to the building opened, and we squished inside. The entryway was obviously not meant for so many people. Removing our parkas, we emerged into a larger room with a computers and control boxes and monitors secured in a series of metal racks. Posters on the walls explained the basic principles of atmospheric science.

The sensor control area in the Arrival Heights lab

Arrival Heights is a special area set aside for atmospheric research in Antarctica. The sensors monitor very low frequency waves to "listen" to the atmosphere. There are several scientists using the facility, each with their own sensors set up to collect data, and one research technician who stays in Antarctica all year to maintain them. The technician showed us the computer monitors where results were displayed. He pointed out to us the openings in the ceiling where the smaller sensors were mounted. He played for us a sound recording of what the sensors "heard." He called it a "whistler," but it really sounded like laser guns firing in Star Wars. It was the sound of lightning striking Earth in the northern hemisphere and propagating a wave through the planet's magnetic field. Very, very cool.

The floor-to-ceiling aurora sensor

In one small room, there was a sensor that reached floor to ceiling. It had a hefty steel base and stretched up through a hole in the ceiling. The technician explained it was for monitoring the aurora australis and pointed out the optic sensors and the filter on top. We can't see the aurora in the summer months because the sun is always up, but the sensor can see them. The technician pulled out photos that the sensor had taken in the past few days, showing fluorescent plasma in the upper atmosphere - the southern lights.

Antarctic research encompasses all disciplines, from biology to geology to physics. I was grateful to experience another aspect of Antarctic science at Arrival Heights.