Travel Log: December 19th, 1997


Picture of the Day
A South Pole "sundog."

DECEMBER 19th, 1997

Randy had the rare opportunity today to photograph "sundogs" at the South Pole. Sundogs are halos around the sun caused by the refraction of light by airborn ice crystals. Randy is scheduled to leave tomorrow for McMurdo Station but the worsening weather makes a delay likely. Janice reports that she is feeling well after her emergency plane landing near McMurdo yesterday.

Date: 19 Dec 97
Time: 1300 local
Location: South Pole
Weather: worsening
Temperature: -29oC
Wind Chill: -40oC
Wind Speed: 7 km/s
Barometric Pressure: 685.9 mB

Go on to the
next day...

Dec 19th Travel Tales

Randy Landsberg: The wind picked up today to around 10 knots and it made things a lot colder, ie. 50 below with the wind chill. There were also lots of "sun dogs", one halo of light was 22 degrees and another was even bigger. These are formed by ice crystals in the air. I was able to make some slides of the crystals by spraying krylon varnish on the slide and then waving it in the air to catch the blowing crystals. There are two main types: a flat hexagon plate and a hexagon cylinder.