08/31/23 – 09/07/23
Prince Christian Sound
I’ve gotten in the groove of things on the ship. The OOI crew deployed the large SUMO-10 buoy along with the whole mooring system. We had a low-pressure system move in so we had to hide out in Prince Christian Sound, Greenland which was STUNNING. We hung out at the entrance of the fjord for a while before going on a glacier hunt and sailing farther into the channel. The blue streaks on the icebergs were amazing to see as they floated by. My favorite glacier was one that stopped at a cliff and had a waterfall coming over the side.
Iceberg with blue streaks cutting through, one of the glaciers we saw, view from the bridge.
As if seeing glaciers wasn’t enough, we also saw the northern lights!! On the first night, I saw what I thought was a faint cloud but it turned out to be the aurora borealis. The sky contained green clouds that night. Then the second night, which was when an incoming solar flare was predicted to happen, we saw a faint light behind the mountains that looked like light pollution you’d see on the horizon. But then the light magnified and streaks shone across the sky, wiggling like green snakes. The crew stood out on the bow and in the bridge watching the lights in the sky. The coolest part was looking straight up and seeing the streaks of light directly above you like there was an alien spaceship trying to pick you up. The lights danced across the sky, and at one point I saw streaks of red mixing in with the green as they were painted across the sky. It was a magical night.
Aurora lights in the sky. My camera picked up more of the green light than we saw in person.
Besides geeking out over glaciers and the northern lights, I 3D printed covers for the Debubblers in the lab to block the light and reduce bacterial overgrowth in between their cleaning maintenance. I also cleaned out the PC02 filter which was full of krill, cleaned the transmissometers, cleaned the forward pump with Emily which was full of mussels and barnacles (yum), practiced Linux with MIT’s text-based adventure game Terminus, prepared the CTD for deployment as the resident “bottle fairy” and practiced radio commands to the winch operator, practiced more Linux with OverTheWire’s Bandit Wargame, refilled the deionized water containers with Milli-Q water, learned from one of the WHOI scientists about the Winkler titration method to look at dissolved oxygen in the water samples from the CTD, and continued working with the 3D printer to create feet to secure the new Cricut craft printer.
Question of the Week: What are the northern lights, and why do they form?
The northern lights, also called the aurora borealis, are an atmospheric phenomenon of dancing lights. Galileo coined the term aurora borealis after Aurora, the Roman Goddess of Dawn, and Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind. In the south pole, the same atmospheric effect is referred to as aurora australis, named after the Greek god of the south wind. Auroras form due to an interaction between energized particles from the sun and Earth’s magnetic field. The Earth has a magnetic field based on the way its molten, iron core circulates that redirects incoming solar particles. Energized particles from the sun hit Earth’s upper atmosphere and are deflected by this magnetic field towards the north and south poles, which then excite molecules in the atmosphere to produce a dizzying array of colors. There was green and red in the aurora I saw since the solar particles excited oxygen and nitrogen molecules, creating green and red colors respectively.
Fun fact: auroras happen on other planets too! These planets also have magnetic fields and atmospheres.
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