We have not been able to launch yet. Conditions in the solar wind have been quieter than expected, which means that we have not been observing the outflow of oxygen ions very much. Actually, we did see a couple of bursts yesterday, but the first one took us by surprise and only lasted 20 minutes. Fortunately, we did not launch, since the outflow would have ended by the time the rocket reached high altitudes. We also saw some outflow later in the day, but is was fairly weak (too weak, we thought) and we decided to wait for a stronger and clearer event.
Our launch window ends on Jan 20, so we still have 5 more days. The solar wind speed is still faster than average and we expect this to last for at least at few more days (remember, it is from that coronal hole). The schedule is getting tight, but we've been in this situation before.
We have been seeing quite a lot of aurora, even though we have not been able to launch. Aurora is something you see very nearly all of the time at high latitudes like this. In fact, there is usually a ring of aurora around the north and south poles. These are called the "auroral ovals" and you can see pictures at http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2005/multimedia/gal_049.htm, taken by a satellite very high above the north pole, with a camera pointed back down to Earth. You may be wondering what the auroral oval looks like in the southern hemisphere -- it turns out that you usually see the same shape and brightness in both hemispheres!
I should probably explain a bit more about this. The first point is that the auroral oval is really centered around the magnetic poles of Earth, not the geographic pole. The magnetic pole is where a compass needle points and is not in the same location at the geographic pole. Second, I should emphasize that that there are many, many different types of aurora including pulsating aurora, flickering aurora, tall rays, vortices, enhanced aurora and so on. Each of these different types is associated with a different process that drives it - and so, each type can tell us more about the space far above it!
Why does aurora occur as a ring around the poles? Tough question, but the basic answer goes back to the fact that aurora is caused by electrically charged particles (electrons and ions) that fall to Earth, but that do so by flowing along magnetic field lines. Of course, in order to cause aurora, these particles have to somehow get ON those field lines. It turns out that the field lines that are anchored (to Earth) in the regions of the auroral oval provide easier access to these charged particles. Since it is easier for these particles to get attached to these field lines, more can travel down to our upper atmosphere.
Here is a neat movie that shows how the idea - how energy from the solar wind gets dumped to the auroral oval.
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A bit more about our hosts, here in Svalbard:
We are working with folks from the The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) - http://www.unis.no. This is actually a school, complete with classes, etc., with a special emphasis on polar studies. Here, you can take very specialized classes in arctic biology, arcitc geology, geophysics (which includes auroral studies), arctic technology, etc.
So, it is a very northern university, where students take unique classes. There's more, though, such as the fact that the first week of class is spent attending a survival school, which is very neat from what I hear. In the course, you learn about frostbite (of course!), how to rescue people from crevasses or glaciers, how to set up a trip wire around your tent if you are sleeping in the field (to alert you that a polar bear is VERY close to your tent!), how to drive boats (we are right near a fiord) and use a survival suit in case you fall in the water. There is another interesting part of this school, which includes a day of rifle training. This is a safety issue, and the university requires that you have a rifle with you if do any field work. In fact, though, whenever students want to go hiking on the weekends just for fun, they can borrow a rifle from the school. It is very common to see students walking around town with a rifle on their shoulder!!
Here is a picture borrowed form the UNIS website. You can see that this is beautiful country (with 24 hours of daylight in the summer).
Speaking of polar bears, two have been spotted nearby in the last few days. I will not be wearing any clothes that might smell like hamburg!!!
Some other pictures:
This is Erik (Cornell grad student) and Fred (UNIS Prof), enjoying a ride in the beltwagon!!
The "observatory", where we work. The bubbles on the roof are plexiglass domes where all of our fancy cameras look up.
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