Astrobiologist Dale Andersen Status Report 25 November 2012, Lake Untersee, Antarctica

Looks like our nice weather may continue for a few days. Today Alfonso, Michael and I installed two small met stations to collect wind/temp/RH at two locations around the lake. The data collected will augment the data being collected by our larger met station that we installed at the end of the peninsula in 2008. We also drilled a sampling hole through the 2.5m thick ice-cover of the south basin. Valery and Vladimir will sample the water column via this hole tomorrow.

We are keeping pretty busy and are still sorting science and diving gear preparing for future work. Alfonso found a nice piece of quartz near the camp that was laying on the ground, and once overturned showed that it was colonized by photosynthetic microorganisms (probably Chroococcidiopsis sp.). Later in the day we unpacked my maging PAM fluorometer to make a few preliminary measurements, so our day ened well!