Undergraduate Days Part 2

Feeling old again this week… another story from my undergraduate days…

2) Auroral Opportunity

I've always wanted to see the Aurora (Borealis or Australis). I've seen pictures of course, and videos, but when I was in my first year at university I got the chance to go to Kiruna in Northern Sweden to see it for myself. The course was run by Umea University and was called ‘Arctic Science’. It promised to cover topics as varied as the Physics of Snow, the Aurora and climate change and also included a visit to the Ice Hotel. I jumped at it! Once I’d got the money together (the course was free but you had to pay for your own accommodation and food while you were there) and worked out that it was going to be possible for me to fit the trip in (it wasn’t part of my degree at Imperial but luckily it fell on the last week of the Christmas holidays) I sent off my application and was lucky enough to be accepted.

For those of you that don’t know about the aurora here’s a really brief outline of the physics: particles blow out of the sun on a magnetic field all the time (the solar wind). Often these particles travel towards Earth but usually our magnetic field protects us from them. On some occasions the magnetic field in the solar wind joins up with the Earth’s magnetic field (called reconnection). The particles in the solar wind can then travel down the Earth’s magnetic field lines (most easily at the north and south poles) and hit the atmosphere. This ionises and excites particles in the Earth’s atmosphere and makes them emit the light that we see as the aurora. The different colours come from different elements in the atmosphere being ionised – mainly red/green for Oxygen and blue for Nitrogen. You can also see aurorae from space on Earth and on other planets with a magnetic field (e.g. Saturn). Studying aurora tells you a lot about which charged particles you have in your system (for example you can spot footprints of the moons of Saturn in the planet’s aurora).

The Arctic Science course was amazing. At that point I’d never been on an aeroplane by myself, I’d never been north of Scotland and I’d never been on a sleeper train (which turned out to be the easiest way to get to Kiruna from Stockholm, where you can easily get an international flight) so the whole experience of getting to the Arctic Circle was completely daunting. I also didn’t speak Swedish (except hello, sorry, please and thank you) but everyone was so kind and I was lucky enough to bump into a retired Swedish-English teacher on my journey, who showed me which platform to wait on.

The whole trip was really memorable. We went to Ice Hotel- a hotel/huge artwork that has to be rebuilt every winter because it melts in the summer months. Thousands of artists craft beautiful beds, statues, archways and even a wedding chapel made entirely of ice! We also got to go dog sledding in the evening, which was definitely my favourite part of the trip. It was so cold we had to wear full body suits and balaclavas that iced up as you breathed. The tour was over a frozen lake and you could hear the ice cracking as the sled went over it. We stopped half way around to warm our hands by a fire, rest the dogs and eat Reindeer meat.

The science was interesting too. We learnt lots about the different structures in the Aurora and other arctic phenomena, including Noctilucent clouds (the highest clouds on Earth) and Sun Dogs (phantom Sun’s created when the atmosphere acts like a lens). We still don’t know a lot about how mechanisms that generate the aurora and lots of research is looking into the physics responsible for the finer detail. We also had an interesting debate about climate change that turned into quite an enthusiastic argument, as we had a couple of sceptics in our group. I also found it interesting to learn about the growth of ice crystals. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see the aurora, as I went when solar activity was very low (solar minimum) so no reconnection occurred.

When I came back I was thrown straight into my first round of university level exams! Over the next month I finished off the remaining coursework and gained my 4.5ECTS points for the Arctic Science course (only valid on the European university system – but I still wanted to finish the course). In the end I passed the course and was left with happy memories of my time in the Arctic Circle, a pair of fetching fluffy snow-boots and a bright orange snow jacket. As far as I know the course is still running so if this is something you’re interested in it is definitely worth a look (http://www.irf.se/~carol/winter/). In 2013/2014 we’ll probably be roughly at a peak in the solar cycle so you should have a much better chance than I did of seeing the Aurora, but I’m not making any promises!

My view from the dog sled