AntarcticDoctor

I’ve always marvelled at how dreams can seem to be prescient; you reach a critical point in the dream, waiting, for instance, for a knock on the door, and then when the knocking comes you realise that it is in the real world, at just the right time.  I’m sure that there are perfectly good explanations regarding the comparative speed of dreams versus reality, or the temporal disjunction of recollection, but I still find it fascinating when it occurs.

This morning I was working hard in the hospital, moving briskly between the emergency department and intensive care and dealing with some very sick patients.  A rather rotund gentleman with severe fluid overload was worsening in the ICU, and I suspected that he had been misdiagnosed – although he certainly did have an element of congestive heart failure, I suspected that his kidneys were to blame for the deterioration, and had asked the nurse to start a drug infusion and ring me in the on-call room as soon as the results of the urgent blood tests were available.  I climbed into the on-call bed, wrapped the blankets in a tight cocoon and was barely asleep when the phone began to ring.  Groggy, I wondered why the air-con was making such a rumbling noise… and then realised that I wasn’t in the hospital; this was SANAE IV; there was a storm wind outside making the whole base rumble and my telephone was ringing. (more…)

The Hermanus Magnetic Observatory, one of the institutions with on-going research projects here at SANAE IV, has recently been made the (ISES) Regional Warning Centre for Africa.  As part of this initiative, the magnetic data collected here (and at other sites) is available online in real time via their web-page, spaceweather.hmo.ac.za.  By using the drop-down lists (see picture above) you can select for the SANAE data, which is updated every 5 minutes.  A large and sharp drop in the magnetic field is usually accompanied by an aurora.  In the graph below, you can see that there was a drop of almost 300 nanoTesla in the total magnetic field last night, just after midnight.  This is the typical time, as we swing furtherest from the sun and the ‘tail’ of the planet’s magnetic field passes overhead.

Last night granted us the gift of the most impressive aurora we have seen since our arrival in Antarctica – a slight glow half-hidden in clouds erupted within minutes to form a dazzling display that filled the sky.  Huge arcs of green stretched across the stars while a shifting, twisting veil hung mesmerisingly to the south.   This lasted for around 15 minutes before fading  – although I was too slow to get my camera into position to capture this enourmous display, the slowly morphing remains and several distinct bands lasted for the next few hours before fading with the pre-dawn glow.

Click on the images for a larger view.