Life Beyond the Beaker

      Merry midwinter from Rothera! Celebrations will be a week later here at Rothera as we have just been assisting with a medical evacuation from the south pole (you can read about the details of this polar mission in the NSF article below).         http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=138999

On the 24th of May we had the sun down ceremony. The sun will now not rise above the mountains for the next few weeks, we have a mixture of a sun rise and sun set from 1130 till 1430. On overcast days it feel like there has been no light all day.  Photo by Tom Everett Daze Routledge lowered the flag as he is the oldest member of our team, when the sun comes back the youngest member of the team will raise the flag.  Photo by Tom Everett  The full team! Photo by Ali Rose Afterwards we all celebrated the occasion by having a few drinks!  Photo by Tom Everett   Photo by Tom Everett  We are all slowly getting used to having to start work in the pitch black, it does not start getting light until 11 am, we then only have a few hours of twilight until a sunset begins around 3 pm. Midwinter (June 21st) is quickly approaching, a few weeks after that date the light will then start to increase again!