While wintertime snow rarely falls on this part of the ice sheet, strong winds are constantly relocating snow onto new dunes, and eroding the surface of others. When the wind lifts the snow overhead, diffusing the light of the sun into a flat gray haze, you completely lose your ability to discern variations in the […]

The sun doesn’t rise, in the expected sense. It breaks the horizon, moving laterally, and traces a low path just above the southern skyline. And after it sets, the sun continues its shallow sweep, tracing the same arc, now just below the horizon. The hushed minutes of sunset stretch into hours, each color of pastel […]

For the first week at Summit, the new science techs shadowed the experienced science techs around the research station, gradually taking on their responsibilities. At the end of the week, a pair of aircraft were called in to carry the outgoing crew back to civilization. The new techs scrambled to ask their last few questions, […]

The other two science techs here at Summit, Jason and Yuki, do much of their work in a small building about a kilometer to the south of the rest of the station. It’s located in the prevailing upwind direction, and is isolated from the rest of the buildings to best capture the clean air and […]

The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, …they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer.  — Philip Pullman, ‘The […]