Still in Alaska

Well I never thought I'd be up here this long. At least I'm learning a lot from Hans! We came close to launching the other night even with all the remote sights clouded in. But Poker was clear and they were planning to launch, except the substorm never really got started properly. There was a good bit of aurora all night long up in Kaktovik, seen as weird green light through the clouds. And there were several negative Bz spikes showing, but just little baby ones, small releases of energy but nothing to write home about. We waited and waited until 2:45am, but no substorm. Kristina must be going a little nuts down there in Poker. On the nights where we had great events, there was either no optics at Poker or they were down for high winds. Then when the atmospheric wind settles down, we're not getting the solar activity. The geophysical and meteorological muses are not communicating well. Kristina Lynch, by the way, is the PI (principal investigator) of this mission so it's all on her shoulders. She is also one of my new personal heroes since she is a successful, smart woman in the same field as me, but she's also quite chill and friendly and interesting. So hooray for awesome women scientists everywhere. I had to get out the other day - this place is suffocating. Anytime I feel like things in my life are really really getting to me, I go walk somewhere alone and try to find a little bit of beauty out there in the world. So here are some pretty pictures I found that day: The ripples of snow look like sand dunes. The wind that creates them is constant here. The observatory is the closer building, with the base in the background. The snow fences help(?) keep the snow drifts from getting too unruly near the base. At least that's the theory, but they still have to plow practically every day.