24 hour day light

Some folks inquired about 24 hours of continuous sunshine before I left so I thought I would share what thats like.

We had our last official sunset on October 20th. At that point though the sun was just barely dipping below the horizon and we had 24 hours of light, just not direct sunlight. Currently the sun is overhead nearly24 hours a day, it goes behind the hills near town for a bit. One odd thing though, being from the northern hemisphere we are accustomed to seeing the sun linger in the southern half of the sky. In the winter its lower and in the summer it can get nearly overhead. Here the sun stays in the Northern half of the sky and because of this, and it sounds weird, the sun seems to move the wrong direction.

Whats also weird is the you can tell time by the sun but not like home. At home you can tell that the sun is near rising or setting, or even directly over head. It moves 15 degrees per hour so you can reason that if its a certain height in the sky its a certain time. Here the sun never goes down it swirls around in the sky. But, I know the if it's shining over Scott base (the Kiwi's base) its morning, if its over Mt Erebus its getting towards dinner.

The sun being out all day play tricks on you mind some times. When I wake up in the middle of the night and see the sun shining through the cracks around the shudders it's hard no to think the its the middle of the day and I should get up. Just the other day my roommate was sleeping, woke up and saw 8:25 on his clock. He saw me with a coffee mug and assumed that it was morning and he was really late for work. He went into full spaz mode trying to get all his clothes on and run out the door. When I told him that it was infact nearly eight thirty at night and he had slept through dinner he was dumbfounded.

We won't have another sunset until March 20th, long after the station closes and I leave. So this means that I won't see stars until late February when I get back to New Zealand.