Moon, Stars, and Hints of Sun

Current Conditions
Temperature: -2F
Wind Chill: -26F

It occurs to me that throughout all this darkness, I have yet to describe the night sky here. Have I grown that accustomed to it?

Up until a week ago, the brief mid-day period of "nautical twilight" was only apparent from Arrival Heights while looking toward the northern horizon, which tended to be a thin line of very deep red blending quickly to deeper blue and then black. This section of sky was usually obscured by clouds, though, and from town the subtle blue wasn't even noticeable, so our days have truly been one long night.

On many clear days, the stars have been very bright and the Milky Way obvious. I regularly see two of the four galaxies visible to the naked eye; the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud. These are only visible in the southern hemisphere and appear as small clouds of light, like pieces broken off of the Milky Way. The other two visible galaxies are in the northern hemisphere: Triangulum and Andromeda.

Though the majority of the stars are different from what we see in the northern hemisphere (no dippers or north star), Orion is often on the horizon, and is a welcome slice of home. Of course, from this southern perspective, he's standing on his head. The face of the moon is also upside-down:

In reality, the moon and Orion are the same, and I'm the one that is upside-down, clinging to the bottom of the earth with my trusty Vibram soles.

I was interested to discover that the moon rises and sets in similar fashion to the sun because it orbits the earth in the same plane that the earth and all the planets orbit the sun. The difference is that the moon's cycle around the earth is four weeks long instead of a year, so it is up for two weeks and then down for two weeks. It rises near its first quarter, waxes to full, wanes and sets at about its third quarter, so we don't see a crescent or new moon in wintertime. Similarly, we don't see a full moon in summertime.

The moon has just set again, but in the past week we have been getting strong hints that the sun is returning. The thin red band that was only in the north at noon now stretches into the west in the afternoon as the sun circles below, but nearer and nearer to, the horizon:

At mid-day the northern sky is pale blue and is pushing the darkness back noticeably each day. Low clouds on the horizon catch reds and oranges and send them in our direction:

High nacreous clouds reflecting intense pink light remind us of our neighbors, the Royal Society Range and Mount Discovery, who have remained invisible until this week. Reaching as high as I've seen them, nacreous clouds silhouette the Kiwi lab at Arrival Heights:

The illuminated plume above Erebus that I once found so eerie has become a common sight again, for me anyway; others in town are not so lucky to get up the hill every day, but I try to bring people with me whenever I can. Brody and Kaycee accompanied me on a recent antenna inspection that yielded this purple view of Erebus, Castle Rock, and Terror: