Piggott Building
The Piggott building is the home of Physical Sciences Division (West). On the six legged platform at Halley a team of four Engineer/Scientists work to monitor, maintain and develop a range of experiments to study the upper atmosphere. Most of our work involves looking at the activity of the Earth's atmosphere from a height of 80 km upwards. Halley is one of the world's premier upper atmosphere and space science facilities and continues to fulfil its reputation of providing first class data.

We run about a dozen experiments throughout the year. Each member of the team has a primary experiment to run then a number of secondary experiments to monitor and maintain where necessary.

Our work on the Piggott

Southern Hemisphere Auroral Radar Experiment (SHARE).

The SHARE radar operates in a manner similar to air surveillance radars. A narrow beam of high-frequency radio waves is formed, which is then swept through sixteen pointing directions to scan 4 million square kilometres of the polar ionosphere every two minutes. The radar has operated continuously since 1988 at Halley, in an experiment, involving scientists from BAS, John Hopkins University (USA) and University of Natal (South Africa).

The radar also forms part of the SuperDARN international radar network and is a contributor to the NASA Global Geospace Science (GGS) project. The SHARE engineer is Dave Glynn, pictured here performing regular maintenance to one of the sixteen SHARE radar towers. Dave also looks after several of the passive experiments such as the magnetometers, riometers and the new micromagnetometer.

Dave came to BAS in July 1999 after several years experience in the electronics industry, and having recently completed a degree at the University of Leicester in Physics with Space Science. He sailed south in October 1999 and will spend two winters at Halley.

 

Advanced Ionospheric Sounder (AIS)

This is the other large scale experiment situated at Halley. AIS was operated first at Halley IV in 1982, based on a NOAA HF radar. Over a number of years, AIS has been upgraded and is now one of six similar ionospheric sounders around the world, other operational instruments being based at Tromso and Utah. As with SHARE, AIS is a regular contributor to the NASA GGS project.


The AIS sounds the ionosphere using radio waves at successively higher frequencies. Reflections of these radio waves are measured using a ground based receiver array and a picture of the activity in the ionosphere can be drawn from these measurements. This picture is known as an ionogram and these ionograms provide useful information for scientists wishing to study the ionosphere.


At Halley the AIS is said to be the tallest man-made structure in the Antarctic with twin masts of almost 50 m from which its transmitter is hung. Maintenance of these masts can prove to be an interesting experience during the cold winter months.


The AIS Engineer is Neil Farnell. Neil also looks after the Optical Aeronomy experiments, TULA and the new Airglow Camera installed at Halley in January 2000.

Neil joined BAS in July 1999, having graduated from the University of York. Neil is also in his first of two winters.

VLF Passive Experiments.

The VLF receiving systems are designed to monitor, record and measure, as comprehensively as possible frequencies in the 3-30 kHz frequency band, the human hearing range. Although it is not possible to hear the sounds that the VLF experiments pick up with the human ear, detailed analysis of the information collected by the sensitive listening equipment at Halley can tell much about what happens in parts of our geospace system. Antarctica is a good site for this experiment since the rest of the developed world produces a lot of noise especially harmonics around 50-60 Hz from Electrical Power Engineering.

The current Passive Engineer is Simon Prasad. Simon is this year's Winter Base Commander. He is currently in his second winter and is looking forward to his trip home through South America.

Data Manager

The Data Manager was formerly a scientist who acted as the head of the department overseeing the work conducted by the engineers. However, this year has seen a change in personnel and a new job description. The Data Manager now handles all of the servers and data network on the Piggott Building. His duties include making daily, weekly and monthly back-ups of the data collected by the various experiments as well as archiving the data to DAT tape to be sent back to Cambridge. The Data Manager also looks after the loggers and handles software development.

Jamie Keir is the inaugural Data Manager. Jamie, like Dave and Neil joined BAS in July 1999 and and is currently working through the first of two winters South at Halley.
Simon Prasad Neil Farnell Dave Glynn Jamie Keir

Last updated: 30th May 2000
Written by: Neil Farnell