Fermilab 50th Anniversary

This is one of 12 power supplies used to provide electric current to the Main Injector bend magnets. As protons accelerate in the Main Injector, their energy changes from 8 GeV to 120 GeV in less than one second. 1 GeV equals 1 billion electronvolts. The bend magnet current needs to increase in order to make a magnetic field strong enough to keep the beam circulating in a controlled manner. The electric current in the magnet ramps from a few hundred amperes to more than 7,000 amperes as a function of increasing beam energy.

Experts worked tirelessly from early morning to afternoon swapping parts and checking readings to fix Linac's drift tube RF station no. 2 in the Linac Upper Gallery. Bill Pellico breathed a sigh of relief when they finally got the signal they were looking for, which was followed by much rejoicing from experimenters.

Who's sporting that bristly smile?

The east facing windows of the prairie-style Cryomodule Test Facility reflect the sunrise on a rare cloudless January morning.

Drew Feld, Ken Koch, Alex Sosa and other members of the Preaccelerator Group use their muscle to tighten vacuum connections on a fresh bottle of hydrogen. The volume of gas within, which lasts approximately eight months, is ionized in the magnetron source and accelerated through Linac and beyond, to the lab's various neutrino and fixed target experiments.

Fermilab Test Beam experimenters from T-1068, the beam test of the ATLAS SVX4 Telescope, manage great smiles at the end of an owl shift in the MTest Control Room at the Meson West Building.

We had problems with a pond pump in the Main Injector on Monday. I met with members of Facilities Engineering Services Section and the Main Injector Department to change operation of the pumps when I saw this guy ambling along on the other side of the road from the MI20 pond pump vault. I grabbed my camera phone and snapped this shot of him as he crossed the berm over the Main Injector. #mobilemonday

This shows the Roads and Grounds Department's scheduled brush pile burn on East Wilson Street site 70. Brush piles are a common result of restoration activities in various land management units at Fermilab. Clearing invasive honesysuckle and buckthorn from wooded areas is a very labor-intensive activity. Some piles are left for animal habitat, some are ground into chips, and some are burned to reduce the biomass, allowing better native plants to take hold.

Multicolored electrical distribution boxes located near the substation at the corner of A and B Roads.

A peaceful Sunday afternoon in the Art Gallery listening to Beethoven by Spektral Quartet and looking at artwork by Ellen Sandor.

Sean Stoll of Brookhaven National Laboratory checking the prototype sPHENIX electromagnetic calorimeter on the MTEST beam of the Fermilab Test Beam Facility on Saturday night.

George Ginther leads a group of high schoolers in Saturday Morning Physics on a tour of DZero, including a visit in the Tevatron tunnel.

Line dancers kicking it up for a good time at Kuhn Barn. They include Phyllis, Bonnie, Jamie, Leslie, Betsy, Violet, Diane, Rosemary, Cathy, Kelly and Debbie.

Is E.T. visiting the Lederman Science Center?

Curious employees can access the Central Utility Building from Cross Gallery if they know where to explore.

Dan Schoo has been an engineer in the Accelerator Division Instrumentation Department for a number of years. His hobby is bird-based artworks, which adorn every inch of wall space in his office.

Many building and enclosures have automatic lighting, they will turn off after a certain amount of time.

Guests try the virtual reality tour "Neutrinos in a New Light" by 2016 Fermilab artist-in-residence Ellen Sandor as she watches.

Ann Nestander is a Senior Field Financial Manager for the Accelerator Division. Ann and the staff of AD financial people are the reason AD personnel can do everything from ordering parts for accelerator components to getting weekly or monthly paychecks. Thanks!

Wanda Newby's handiwork for the winding and wire chamber facility.

The first trace of today's snowfall on the trees in Big Woods.

Radio-frequency cavities are what we use to accelerate protons in all of our machines. Here, RF Technician Rachel Pfaff makes an adjustment to a Recycler Ring RF station. I was in the Main Control Room on Thursday, and beam went away due to a Recycler RF problem. As the Main Injector and Recycler Ring operations specialist, I went to the MI-60 RF gallery. A small team of RF exerts quickly diagnosed and fixed the problem and then proceeded to fine-tune some Main Injector and Recycler RF stations.

Joshua loves his vintage ride at Fermilab daycare!

Safety personnel Joel Fulgham, Bill Higgins, Mike Vincent and Maddie Wolter spend a portion of the afternoon replacing expired Radiological Worker Permit RWP papers. Up to date RWPs inform employees who must enter the accelerator tunnels about potential radiation hazards in the areas they will be working and how they can protect themselves from said hazards. All employees must read and sign the RWPs before entering the tunnels.

Janina Gielata works for the Particle Physics Division Scintillation Detection Development Group. Here she prepares an old CDF tile to use for a scintillator aging study by CMS.

A tree in a corn field frames Wilson Hall in the distance.

Installation of the high-energy beam transport beamline at the Fermilab Accelerator Science and Technology is coming along nicely.

Tall grass leaves a lasting mark on an old service building.

A set of hardware storage drawers in the Linac Lower Gallery photographed from the floor.

Ron Kellett takes a look at connections atop the radio-frequency quadrupole for the PIP-II Injector Test, or PIP2IT, at the Cryomodule Test Facility. CMTF is an accelerator R&D facility and PIP2IT is geared toward improving proton beam intensity and quality for Fermilab's users.

It seems like every day in 2017 so far has been gray and dreary.

It's a deer.

Bert Gonzalez works in the Lab D cleanroom at SiDet using the coordinate measuring machine, which measures modules to micron accuracy.

Gray January skies frame the high-rise in the distance.

We are curating an art exhibit by Angela Gonzales. The exhibit will be on display in the Fermilab Art Gallery on June 1. Her work is truly exceptional and thoughtful.

Rachel Pfaff, Marty Murphy, Dave Pushka, Todd Johnson, Roger Dixon, Chris Jensen and others enjoy a lunch break in the Fermilab cafeteria.

The face of Wilson Hall after dark

Withdrawing morning fog exposes fields prepped for spring crops.

Salah Chaurize is pictured adjusting a cooling element of an important component for extracting protons to be delivered to Fermilab's various accelerator beamline experiments.

Morning Fog - Betz Prairie

Two foggy days in a row going to work. I should get a day off.

For the anniversary kick-off celebration, people gave virtual-reality tours of artwork by artist-in-resident Ellen Sandor in the Fermilab Art Gallery.

Minerba Betancourt, left (pointing at the whiteboard) instructs these high school students from Saturday Morning Physics on how a neutrino beam is created.

The Stockroom, located at Site 38 across from the fuel service center, is Fermilab's one-stop shop for anything from personal protective equipment to office supplies to pipe fittings. It also serves as storage for old bits of lab equipment and old accelerator beamline components.

High rise reflected in a parking lot puddle

A view from the Wilson Hall crossover

A gray, overcast morning outside of Wilson Hall.

Testing on fast-timing photo tubes in the Photo Detector Timing Lab

Victor Martinez, Particle Physics Division Electrical Engineering Support, spends many of his noontime hours making music either outside the Industrial Center or in the high bay of the building, depending on the weather.

I miss seeing the horses out in the field when they were not in the barn.

Inside the new Mu2e building

Denton Morris inspects an electrostatic septa. This septa is used to slowly extract protons from the Main Injector to the P1 beamline. The septa is comprised of about 1400 very thin 0.0004-inch-diameter wires that are perfectly aligned to form a plane, which you can see running along the left side of the image leading you to Denton's eyes. On the left side of the wire plane one can see a narrow dark channel; this is where extracted protons travel. They are bent by a static electric field that is created when the cathode barely visible on the left side of the wire channel is raised to a potential of 100-kV with respect to the wires, which are at ground potential. There is no electric field in the circulating beam channel - the main portion of the vacuum chamber you are looking down. Because the septa sits at very high voltages for many seconds at a time, all internal surfaces must be very smooth to prevent electric sparking. Consequently the metal inside the chamber is highly polished, which creates a lot of internal reflections.

Following the lines of the Wilson Hall building west side, it sure is way up there!

Fisheye view of the "Tracticious" sculpture in the courtyard of the Industrial Building Complex. IARC and Wilson Hall are also visible. Former Director Robert Wilson provided the artistic vision. and current longtime employee Tom Nicol provided the structural design of the sculpture. You can see Tom's fantastic pictures here in the DIFF gallery! From FermiNews, Aug. 12, 1988: "The sculpture is comprised of 16 stainless steel outer tubes, made from scrap cryostat tubes from Tevatron dipole magnets, and 16 inner tubes, which are 5 in., Schedule 40, carbon steel pipes from old well casings salvaged from the Fermilab "bone yard." Each outer tube is 39 ft long and 6-1/2 in. in diameter, and weigh 550 pounds apiece; the sculpture itself rises to a height of 36 ft."

Every Monday and Wednesday, the Accelerator Division Operations Department has a scheduling meeting "The Nine O'Clock Meeting" in the Huddle conference room. This was from today's meeting.

While the bison's are away the geese and ducks take advantage of the large water puddles in the pasture made by last night's rain.

I wasn't looking through a looking glass, rather my car's windshield after a ice storm. Ice looking at you.

Straw rolls

Bison barn at sunrise

Instead of following the yellow brick road, I'll follow the red tile path.

Officer Angel Esquivel on Duty at Batavia Road Entrance

A quiet evening at Industrial Center Building

On select Saturdays there are tours of the art gallery exhibit "Neutrinos in a New Light" by artist-in-residence Ellen Sandor, here Kurt explains the physics as the participant in the foreground experiences the virtual reality.

Mike Roman and Kevin Kuk work together on CCD development for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument in the Lab D cleanroom at Sidet.

Sunrise from The Outback

Stan Johnson, leaning in from the left, leads the AD/Operations Department "9:00 Meeting" in Curia II. AD Head Sergei Nagaitsev is partially obscured on the far left. This meeting happens on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays every day of the year except during major maintenance periods.

Venus is up just after sunset in the south-western sky. The frozen Reflecting Pond in front of Wilson Hall made this angle possible.

Operations Specialist Sr. Bert Gonzalez sits in the Lab D cleanroom at Sidet and demonstrates how he sets hub I.D. on a module used for the USCMS FPix Upgrade.

All hands meeting today...

Wilson Hall atrium decorated for Fermilab's 50th Anniversary. Taken during the All-Hands kickoff party.

50th Ice Sculpture for All-Hands Meeting

These particular instruments are "Wild Heerbrugg", made in Switzerland, and were some of the first instrumentation to be used to measure and survey items in the early years of Fermilab. The one on the right is about 14'' tall. Many more can be seen on display at the Alignment & Metrology Department in the Outback building which behind Dzero.

Big Bird Hawk? with Wilson Hall looming in the background fog.

This PHSCologram Sculpture titled "Binary Bypass: Neutrinos for Data Communication, 2016" by Ellen Sandor, Chris Kemp, Diana Torres.

Accelerator Division Engineer Kevin Duel poses next to a newly installed electrostatic beam extraction septa in the Main Injector tunnel. The accelerator program was off for two days this week to accommodate the installation of the device. The picture was taken a few hours prior to the completion of the task.

The NuMI Decay Pipe is a 275-meter long and 2-meter wide tunnel where secondary pion particle beam decays into neutrinos after going through the NuMI Horn. The tunnel is pitched at 3.3 degrees so that the resultant neutrino beam can be properly aligned between the Near on site at Fermilab and Far Ash River, MN NOvA detectors. The passageway, pictured here, runs along side the Decay Pipe, which is on the other side of the left wall. This picture was taken at a depth of about 225 feet underground.

At Users' Center Meeting Room: From Left to Right: A. Marchionni, M. E McCollum, R. Zwaska, D. Pushka, K. Fahey, C. Mossey, L. Hammond, I. Rakhno, M. Andrews, I. Tropin, J. Johnstone, C. Johnstone, C. Crowley, V. Papadimitriou, J. Hylen, L. Valerio, T. Kobilarcik, R. O'Sullivan, T. Hamernik, V. Bocean, R. Andrews, K. Williams, T. Lundin, S. Tariq

Need to know where project North is in Lab C; just look up!

Proton Source Scientist Kiyomi Seiya at Console #2 in the Main Control Room.

IARC lunchroom...

John Diamond left and Ning Liu of the Accelerator Division, Instrumentation Department, debug a new version of firmware for the toroids at PXIE.

This is an SVX Prime Barrel Run 1A which was a part of the CDF Detector

Accelerator operators Michael Olander left and Michael Guzman minding the beam in the Main Control Room during their 12 hour shift in the Main Control Room.

Dan Hooper PPD/Astrophysics is the first lecture of the "Winter Term" of Saturday Morning Physics. There were about 70 high school science enthusiasts in attendance today.

Jeff Nelson left and Will Henninger of William and Mary working on a Proto DUNE high voltage test setup inside the 35 Ton Liquid Argon Cryostat located at PC-4.

Skunk near Eola Rd. Picture taken with a telephoto lens from a safe distance!

Mark Ruschman, Sr. Technical Specialist for the SuperCDMS SNOLAB Experiment, is preparing a sub-kelvin component test.

Late night teleconference with our India collaborators - Don Mitchell, Vincent Roger, Paul Derwent, Vikas Jain, Joe Ozelis l to r

Lauren Biron is the apple of many a googly eye. She wields words masterfully, spins multiple plates, and, as the lab's social media guru, connects with Fermilab followers the world over. She is also not above the rest of us, when the situation absolutely calls for it, in pretending to be awake through the application of plastic eyes to closed eyelids.

L to R Athula Wickremasinghe, Aleena Rafique, Jennifer Raaf, Catherine James, Joesph Zennamo, and Erica Snider working in the Remote Operations Center West where scientist monitor experiments at Fermilab.

Sun Rise

Ramsey Auditorium and breezeway ceiling at the end of the day.

Chris Mossey and Elaine McCluskey meet often to discuss the LBNF Project

Booster pond with CUB, ice and sun

Night shot of the high rise, with the wind it was cold.

Dave Ifversen, Phil Adamson, Steve Baginski

Karie Badgley uses a borescope to locate and inspect carbon panels in the upper ring of the Muon g-2 experiment.

Foggy start to back to work week...

Wilson Hall flags

It's a holiday at Fermilab. I'm here. Why isn't everyone else?

Rick Meaderdes and Mary Hobbs working the evening shift in the Communications Center.

Wilson Hall

Wilson Hall at Fermilab shot from the south side on the evening of January 1, 2017

Eric S. & Mauser

Dawn of a new year...

Bubble Chamber