What is this? And where would you find it at the South Pole station? It might remind UW–Madison folks of the “What are you looking at?” feature in Inside UW–Madison, a weekly newsletter that periodically spotlights a cropped photo for which readers can guess the campus location. In the case above, you’d find it covering a window—it’s a decorative window cover, woven with 8mm data tape. (IceCube’s winterovers did a full inventory of data tapes this week.) Cropped so close, the white looks like snow stuck to the edges rather than reflections on the surface.
The winterovers also cleaned up the porch at the ICL to minimize spring shoveling. And captured a photo of the sun still hanging over the horizon, showing off the winter flag line between the dark sector and the station. The bottom photo presents another close-up. This one perhaps more recognizable—at least as a musical instrument, if not specifically as a sousaphone.