Our first of three Keck telescopes is currently cooling down. Everything in it seems to be working well, although the real tests will come once we get cold. The optics should reach 4K right around Christmas. The focal plane itself will hopefully reach 0.25K a few days later. Here is a picture of it.
I've taken some other pictures of interesting things around the station. The first is a picture of the traverse tractors. This are the vehicles they drive in from the coast, bringing fuel. I think most of the fuel and supplies still comes by LC-130, and these are more experimental than anything.
I snapped a shot of an LC-130 at the loading area. These planes fly in as often as 5 times a day when the weather is good, but never turn off there engines while they are here. They just load up and take off again. I've heard they are concerned about the engines freezing, but I'm not sure how true that is.
The third picture is of sastrugi, which are grooves in the ice formed by the wind. It always is cold enough here that the snow on the surface stays as a fine powder, and gets blown around, making these formations. (The tracks in the foreground are made by snowmobiles, not wind)
Finally, I found a map of Antarctica that shows a lot of the features I've been mentioning. You can find McMurdo, the Transantarctic Mtns, and the South Pole.
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