Sunday, October 28, 2007

A sundog at Halloween

I imagine the pumpkins stacking up at home and all is ready for Trick or Treat? Here no pumpkins, but the Halloween party here was interesting (it is held the Saturday before Halloween in the old helikopter hangar, which is now a Gym). Unfortunately we could not participate in the festivities, because we had 32 m of core to log at night, but we were served with some interesting entertainment at our Midrats meal from people coming back from the party to grab an after midnight meal: various Zombies, Jokers, Hippies, and a guy with a Cow costume that you could milk??? Anyway, when we got back to work, the American co-chief scientist was dressed like Eddy van Halen (the acting Italian co-chief is standing next to him in the photo, not knowing what to think of it).

That night there was a Sundog: it looks like there is more than one Sun with a halo and it is caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere. It is a peculiar polar phenomenon, which I witnessed before when doing research in Greenland. We did get some ice fog later on. Instead of very moist air composed of water droptlets, the fog is frozen into ice crystals that precipitate on all exposed surfaces. You had to be careful that your gloves did not freeze onto the handle bars of the stairs.


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