Night shift
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, a crew of four to five operators plus a crew chief are on shift in Fermilab's Main Control Room, monitoring the accelerator complex. You would think that the midnight to 8 a.m. shift would be dreaded. While it probably isn't anybody's favorite, working into the wee hours of the morning can have its perks.
“There is definitely an advantage to working the night shift,” said Marty Murphy a crew chief in Fermilab's Accelerator Division. “You get to see gorgeous sunrises, lunar eclipses — all kinds of astronomical events. And you get to be here when nobody else is, which can be nice.”
On the evening of November 7, 2004, the midnight crew experienced a rare treat as the aurora borealis lit up the sky for hours. Even though he wasn't on shift at the time, Murphy knew that he couldn't pass up the opportunity to photograph the aurora at Fermilab. “It was fairly constant, and you could see waves,” he said. “It almost looked like a veil waving in the breeze.”
This isn't the first time that Murphy has found a use for his photography skills during a midnight shift. “I had a photograph published in FermiNews in 1997 when beam went into the Main Injector for the first time,” Murphy said. “Because the event happened around 3 a.m., there weren't many volunteers to photograph it. I guess another perk of the midnight shift is getting a chance to exploit your talents when other people don't want to be awake.”
Elizabeth Clements
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