We have had several visitors, and there are 140 people on-station now, trying to accomplish as much as possible before the station closes in February. Since there isn't much seismic activity in Antarctica, it's a good place to record earthquakes from all over the world. Several groups are studying the sun and its effects on the earth's atmosphere. Or you can figure it out pretty easily just by knowing how the earth moves around the sun. Maybe we'll dedicate a later issue to the earth, the moon, and the sun, and why the seasons are different here than in the midlatitudes.
Astronomy is a fast-growing interest at the South Pole.
Some scientists are measuring snow stakes to see how much snow accumulates near the station per year, and others are drilling ice cores to measure changes in the earth's atmosphere. I work in a building called the Clean Air Facility. The National Science Foundation built this building upwind of the main South Pole Station so we could find out what's in the Cleanest Air on Earth. Right now, four groups share the building. My group, NOAA, is interested in meteorology, solar and terrestrial radiation, aerosols, and trace gases.