The video above was taken two weeks ago, looking across North Cove from the balcony of New Bransfield House. The sun rose, but hung low in the sky, partially obscured by the mountains on the horizon, and finally set at around 4:00 in the afternoon. But at least we could see it.
Then look at the photos below, taken two days ago, of the sunrise, this time at 11:00am and then the sun setting behind Reptile Ridge, at 2:20 in the afternoon.
Notice the sea starting to freeze now.
All we saw of the sun all day was the glow of it's corona. It was a beautiful day.
And that was the last we saw of it!! We won't see the sun again until the end of July. We'll still have pretty sunrise and sunset skies for a couple more weeks, but the sun won't rise above the horizon. Morning will merge into evening until eventually, we will just have barely a dull glow on the horizon that lasts for a few short hours.
And that's how the Antarctic year goes; the endless, timeless cycle of darkness and light.
The temerature has remained fairly constant, hovering around minus 9C, but we've been having some pretty fierce winds, and as we get further into winter those winds are going to get stronger and colder.
Here's a photo of me passing some time doing some hand carving. As an "artist" I tend to work with the abstract form. Make of that what you will....
I've finished making my Midwinter present now. It is actually Midwinter Present Mark 2. At the time, I was happy with the first present I made, but having been spending a lot of time in the chippy shop messing about with wood and learning new skills, I had the confidence to attempt something a little bit more ambitious. and I'm happy with the finished item.
I'm starting to get a collection of miscellaneous wooden "things", now. But I have plans....
On June 14th at midday (Rothera time) I and some of my colleagues will be busking outside in the cold as part of the Musequality World Busk world record attempt at a simutaneous busk across all 7 continents. We have our own web page at the Justgiving website. Danny is working on it at the moment. Here's the link for it. If you feel like supporting us and making a donation to the charity, please feel free to do so.
I won't be playing bass on the day, I'll be playing guitar. Just to prove I can do it, here's a photo of me playing guitar and singing at the Folk Night we had a few months back.
(Photo taken by Jonny Yates)
We've decided to call ourselves the Antarctic Minkes - "Antarctic" for obvious reasons and "Minkes" after the Minke whales that visit Ryder Bay during the summer. And it is also a play on words that sounds like some other band you may have heard of.
Right - penguin time.
This video is the one that I meant to post last time, but due to an unfortunate slip of the mouse I managed to post the wrong clip
There aren't many penguins round at the moment so getting new photos of them isn't easy, but here's a couple for you.
I had to show you this one, but I didn't take it.
This was a great shot, taken by Mike Short, our electronics engineer.
The caption should read: "Penguin Ready For Take-Off".
