It was a
beautiful day here in Eureka today. Completely cloud-free skies made
the day shift very happy. Rodica and Felicia logged 25 and 28
direct-sun measurements with the Bruker and PARIS respectively, and are
very pleased with how the new optics are working out. Volodya and Tom
made peace with the SPS/MAESTRO tracker, which is now working
perfectly, and sighted the SPS and MAESTRO instruments on the sun.
These instruments are now both fully operational. Things weren't quite
so successful for Cristen, as the newly restored PEARL-GBS laptop
reverted to its problematic behavior and ability to communicate with
the instrument. Her own laptop has now been fully donated to the cause,
and she is in the process of stripping her work off of it. Her lab
testing continued successfully though, and the identified light leak
has been fixed. Both SAOZ and the UT-GBS continue to work well.
After sunset (today at 15:11), Felicia made some good progress with the
PARIS automation testing. She and I stayed up at the lab until the
LIDAR folks came up to give her a little more time with the instrument.
Back at the station, the rest of the crew went out to watch the first
official ACE ozonesonde launch. It was very cold (-43C ambient) with a
few knots of wind, but Andre and Mike launched the large plastic
"raven" balloon successfully and it reached an impressive 34.4 km (5.2
hPa).
Unfortunately that wind continued through the night, bringing clouds that hampered Bernard and Emily's DIAL measurements.