Day 5 in Antarctica

Devin in front of a working DTS instrument!

December 1, 2013
I felt a bit ill in the morning, but it wore off.  Ian and I deployed the drop camera and tested a sediment sampler in the dive hole.  We decided the sampler wasn't too useful and didn't use it again.  In the afternoon, I helped Devin deploy the DTS.  I don't know what the TLA stands for, but it consists of a long, industrial bundle of fiber optic lines that gets suspended in the water (to the bottom of the lake).  A laser sends pulses down the line, and the reflections are timed.  The strength and timing of the reflections measure the temperature of the cable in different places.  The idea was to look for small temperature changes related to convection in the lake.

Deploying the cable was very stressful.  It is a stiff cable and was wound backward, so we had to manipulate it a lot.  It made many popping sounds, so both Devin and I were terrified we were breaking it.  However, by the end of the day, Devin got a good signal, so we really felt like celebrating!

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