Antarctic Drive-in Theatre:

"We were at our drive in theatre out on the sea ice of Davis Station, Antarctica, when the auroras appeared," says Michael Zupanc. "We made our theatre by clearing some snow off the sea ice and projecting the film onto a nearby cliff. The movie was the Blues Brothers."

Gday, thought you might be interested in having a few more images from the big ice block! All of these photos were taken over the last few weeks at the Australian research station, Davis. There has been a fair bit going on in our skies recently, we've had some fantastic aurora displays (when the clouds are cooperative) and now that the sun has returned we have also been treated to some spectacular refraction events thanks to the minuscule ice crystals in the polar air. Higher up in the stratosphere we are also beginning to see the development of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), which have been visible to both the LIDAR and the naked eye. Temperatures in this region are now falling below -80C which allow these "nacreous" clouds to form. Unfortunately, for the ozone layer, it also heralds the onset of the spring-time ozone hole. Nitric acid in the PSCs react with CFCs in the atmosphere to form chlorine which then catalyse the photochemical destruction of ozone. As beautiful as these clouds are, their pernicious influence on our atmosphere is a solemn reminder that our everyday activities can have profound and far-reaching consequences.

Went out tonight to try my luck with the Perseid meteor shower. We stayed up till 2 am braving the horrendous mosquitoes by Salt River waiting for the clouds to go and pass but they never did. My flash ended up dying so it was a bit too pitch dark to get any decent shots of the foreground. Tried out some shots regardless, and had my shooting partner Nature Photographer Thomas Koidhis sit on the bench in front of me with a couple of our friends to do his shot. Excuse the color noise, it’s a very scaled down and compressed sample jpeg originally photographed at 6400 ISO and pushed 2/3 of a stop.

After one of the windiest Julys on record here, we finally got some very clear skies and aurora Australis at the geographic South Pole. We can also see Jupiter, Venus and Mars just rising above the horizon now. The sun will be returning to the Pole in a little over 6 weeks. , website: www.polarwinter.com - J. Dana Hrubes - Winterover, South Pole Telescope - Station Science Leader - Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station - Antarctica

So went out last night in anticipation of the CME that was - maybe - going to hit. And of course the Perseids (that tale of hitting 2 birds with 1 stone). Well close to our local midnight it did spark something. Kp was 3 for most of the night. Perseids vs Cygnids was about a 60-40 win for the Perseids. All in all saw close to 35 meteors. Good night. :)