Today is the day when Science might get done. I am awaiting a shipment of our coils we sent out about 2 weeks ago. The Norwegian Postal Service website is down at the moment and I can't track to see if the goods have left Tromso. The Post Office opens in about an hour and I'll go and see if they can help me. If I don't receive the coils today that means I will stay in Longyearbyen until Thursday or maybe until next Monday depending on when I can get a flight up to Ny-Alesund.
What am I doing up here exactly? We have an array of induction coils spread out over Svalbard. (It looks like I need to update the webpage when I return as it is out of date of where one of the instruments is located.) The coils measure a current induced by dB/dt or the change in the magnetic field over time. We use this information to see how the solar wind is interacting with the magnetosphere, look at the signature of substorms on the ground, among other science-y things. One of the sets of coils (in Ny-Alesund) has stopped working over the last year, my job is to go and see what is going on and replace the entire system with one we shipped.
The system in Longyearbyen has a battery that needs to be soldered to the data acquisition board. The people in the airport looked at my solder quite strangely when I went through security. I was in a bit of rush to pack, so I inadvertently put the solder in my bag and it caused them to send my bag through the x-ray machine a few times. They decided it was harmless and allowed me to go through.
The last system is in Isfjord Radio. I am getting there by a sort of cruise boat as that is the only way it is accessible during the summer. There are no roads between settlements on the island. You have to fly or take a boat or go by snowmobile to get to anywhere else. In Isfjord Radio, I will be obtaining the data from the system and trying to set up a static IP address so we can just download the data automatically from our server at UNH.
I spent yesterday wandering around Longyearbyen. There was a large cruise ship in town so there were a lot of people wandering about. Below are some pictures from my excursion.
All the buildings have been painted print colors. It has been grey for the past two days I have been there and if this is any indication what the rest of the summer is like, I would think that bright color somewhere is called for.
There really are polar bears all over the island. I hope I do not see any. The translation is "The Entire Svalbard". Many of the tourists are eager to take pictures of the bears while they are out on their tours.
There are even postcards of polar bears covered in blood. Gross.
It is really quite pretty here, if a little barren. The hills are tall with bits of snow, and fog covers the tops of them all day.
Apparently in Svalbard, you have to watch out for men crossing the street in fedoras. Also, this is the sign by the school. All the other pedestrian crossing signs are for a generic person. It is only the couple by the schools of the creepy fedora guy.
Again, beautiful.
I took this picture because my advisor has never seen Longyearbyen in daylight. He was here for a rocket launch two years ago when darkness reigned supreme.
A funny story. I woke up and looked at my watch last night. It read 11 and I thought that meant 11am. It turns out that after panicking, packing up all my stuff, turning in my key to the locked after hours box (I wanted to get out of there quickly), and walking into town, I found out it was 11pm and I was now without a place to sleep. I was able to find a room at the Radisson for 2.5 times what I had paid for the previous room, but at least I now have internet in my room and the breakfast was much better. Next time, find out the real time before going crazy. The sky has the same look all day/all night and I couldn't tell if it was morning or night.
I guess that is it for now. I am off to find my coils. Hopefully the next post will come from Ny-Alesund.
Is the post card polar bear standing on a spread out carcass? It looks like a scene from Fargo with all that bloody snow.
ReplyDeleteBrian, it looks that way. Maybe the Coen Brother's got their inspiration from polar bears.
ReplyDelete