Middle Polar Atmosphere Fieldwork at Andøya Space Centre
23:03:00I started writing this as we waited to hear whether we were being evacuated from the student barracks up here in Nybyen; a big storm was about to hit Longyearbyen (with 80mph winds and 50-100mm of rainfall expected). With unseasonably warm weather and land saturated with water from a storm a few weeks ago which triggered really bad landslides, more landslides were highly likely and Nybyen is a high risk area. As it happens, we were evacuated for 3 nights, and with the evacuation upheaval combined with a report deadline it meant this blog post never got finished. Anyway, here it is now... Enjoy!
I'm just back from a week on the mainland doing fieldwork for the AGF-210 Middle Polar Atmosphere Course, where we stayed at Andøya Space Centre (Andøya Rocket Range) for a week from the 30th October - 4th November.
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| Landing in Tromsø (Spot the Kelvin Helmholtz instability..!) |
We left Longyearbyen on Friday 28th, the sun having dipped below the horizon a few days earlier, not to rise again until the Spring. Seeing the sun rise again as we flew south was pretty special!
We spent a couple of days relaxing in Tromsø before flying onto Andenes. It was a bit odd to see sensibly priced fruit and vegetables in the supermarket, but the alcohol was expensive.
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| Out for (amazing) pizza at Casa Inferno in Tromsø |
On Sunday evening, we took a small plane to Andenes airport on the island of Andøya. We were fed and got an early night after a busy weekend. On the first day, we were introduced to Andøya Space Centre and learned about what they do: they support sounding rocket and ballon operations and have lots of ground based scientific instruments. They also operate ALOMAR, an observatory. We had a tour of the Space Centre, including the rocket launch pad and different control rooms. In the afternoon we had a lecture introduction to LIDAR measurements in preparation for the next day's visit to the ALOMAR Observatory.
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| Science centre for rocket launches |
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| The launch pad. |
The next day we visited ALOMAR (Arctic LIDAR Observatory for Middle Atmosphere Research). ALOMAR is up on the mountain near to the Space Centre. We were lucky enough to have beautiful weather and a great view from the observatory. Here we learned about the instruments at the observatory and had lectures about the sodium (resonance) LIDAR. As it was such a nice day the LIDAR was running so we couldn't go to the roof of the observatory to see the other instruments that they have up there - there's a sun photometer, some radiometers and all sky imagers up there amongst other things.
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| Looking over the little fishing village of Bleik |
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| Looking down towards Andenes. |
We went back to the space centre for lunch and a lecture about MST (Mesosphere, stratosphere, Troposphere) RADAR before going back to ALOMAR in the evening to see the LIDAR running at night. We hiked up the mountain to the observatory in the dark - it was quite a view with the lasers in the sky. We got to look at some of the data coming in from the experiment: LIDAR looks at clouds, aerosols, temperature and wind. There are different types of LIDAR for different applications, but one of the areas of study at ALOMAR is noctilucent clouds.
We walked home from ALOMAR which was a nice walk with a small bit of aurora. A couple of hours later we went outside to see the pretty amazing aurora. There was so much of it that I struggled to take a photo that wasn't completely green (picture is taken on a compact camera so sorry for the poor quality).
The next day, I decided it would be a good idea to swim in the sea before breakfast and managed to persuade Mo to come with me. It was seriously cold - the sand dunes were frozen solid. The beach was beautiful with white sand and blue water, but it certainly didn't feel like the Caribbean! It felt colder than swimming up here in Adventfjorden at 78°N.
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| The LIDAR running. |
We were able to see the laser equipment whilst the experiment was running, but we had to put pretty special looking laser goggles on - think FN-2187 and you're pretty much there. It was a bit surreal as whilst I was able to take pictures with my camera of the green light from the laser, I couldn't see any of it at the time because of the goggles: the telescope room looked pitch black to me (see below, it was really green!).
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| One of the lasers (with a safe optical distance of 350 km..!) |
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| The telescope room. |
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| Aurora back at the space centre. |
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| A beautiful morning for a (cold) swim! |
We had some lectures on meteors, meteor ablation and what we can learn from looking at meteor trails. Meteors are also the reason the sodium resonance LIDAR we learned about at ALOMAR can determine temperature and velocity: meteors are a constant source of atomic sodium. We then visited MAARSY, which is a coherent scatter RADAR which looks at the mesosphere and lower thermosphere.
We then had a fun afternoon in the 'Spaceship Aurora Visitor Centre' where we had to work as a team upon a spaceship to collect data from the aurora. You get a score at the end, needless to say we didn't beat a group of 11 year olds who had got 100%... There were lots of toys for us to play with at the centre too.
On the last day (my birthday) we analysed some of the MAARSY data in matlab to extract information about atmospheric winds. We then learned about rocket dynamics, got a demonstration of hybrid rocket fuel and then had the opportunity to make our own paper rockets to fire from an air launcher. No photographic evidence i'm afraid but you didn't miss much, my rocket sucked - I should stick to science a bit closer to the ground!
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| AGF-210 at MAARSY RADAR (Photo: Noora Partamies) |
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| Yannik and I performing vital comms work aboard Spaceship Aurora |
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| "Projector-topography sandpit thing" |
On the last day (my birthday) we analysed some of the MAARSY data in matlab to extract information about atmospheric winds. We then learned about rocket dynamics, got a demonstration of hybrid rocket fuel and then had the opportunity to make our own paper rockets to fire from an air launcher. No photographic evidence i'm afraid but you didn't miss much, my rocket sucked - I should stick to science a bit closer to the ground!
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| Hybrid rocket fuel demonstration (!!) |
Overall I had a really awesome time on the AGF-210 field course and learned so much in what was a jam-packed week. They also fed us at least 5 times a day, so I'd say that was pretty awesome too. It's been a pretty steep learning curve for me to go from marine science to middle atmospheric physics but I am so glad that I took the course - it's really fascinating (if crazily complicated at times!).
Flying back to Longyearbyen and saying goodbye to the sun at Tromsø airport was a bit sad, but i'm finding that the polar night is a positive experience so far.
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| Taken from Andøya Space Centre as we were firing our paper rockets on the evening of my birthday. It's a really beautiful place! |
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