We have been here in Fairbanks for a week now and are fully nocturnal. After the getting our equipment tested and working out a few kinks, we started to deploy our cameras around the greater Fairbanks area, starting with one of the sites we observed at last year – Harding Lake. Monday night, we left 4 all sky cameras at our base of operations up on Chena Ridge and took another 4 with us to the lake, each location with 2 cameras with two settings. At the lake, the sky was partly cloudy, or for the optimists out there, partly clear. We set up our cameras across the icy lake shore, and with the quantitative work completed settled in for a few hours of observation by eye.
To the North, we immediately notice a pale gray airglow that we suspected to be aurora which we confirmed with a 15 second exposure with a digital camera. Cameras, being more sensitive to green light than the human eye, capture a hyperreal image of the aurora. The green is more brilliant, and the bulk structure stands in greater contrast. But something is lost. A camera sensor requires an integration time far longer than the human eye, and the rapid fluctuating motion that so intrigues us as plasma physicists is lost to the averaging/blurring effect of the long exposure. We stand out on the frozen lake watching the hazy glow ebb and flow over under the big dipper and take turns identifying constellations and planets until we get cold. We pile back into the trucks and drive back home to Chena Ridge, leaving the cameras to their work.
Tuesday morning (afternoon according to society), we pull data from the cameras we set out at base and compared the performance of the settings. The wisdom of redundant systems during the software test was borne out when the experimental branch was found to have failed. Two of us headed back to Harding to retrieve 3 of the 4 cameras we set out there, and leave one with a fresh battery. We leave these two to see how long the batteries last in the cold. The punchline is that the cameras’ battery will last about 2 nights before failing. The lake is a different place in the light of day. A stark landscape, yet not featureless as it seemed in the darkness of midnight. The lake ice is not a smooth surface, but instead it is patterned like the sea floor with snow drifts accumulating across the basin.
When we return to Chena Ridge, we make a plan for the evening. John’s college friend, Emma, has a sounding rocket launch window that nearly exactly overlaps with our expedition and she has invited us out to Poker Flats Research Range to watch. Her goal is to launch a rocket into the aurora to make in situ measurements of auroral plasma. We decide to take her up on this offer, but before we head to Poker we send a small party to set up some cameras at Olnes Pond to the West of the Flats. Except for a few ice fishing holes, the pond is frozen solid and three cameras are set up without a hitch.
We reconvene at the crossroads of Fox, AK and then caravan over the mountains on the Old Chatanika Highway. We make it to Poker just before the launch window opens and the road blocks go up. The observation building is a buzz of activity when we arrive. The launch window is held at T-15 minutes, and will be until vertical checks are completed and the final go ahead is given based on auroral and weather conditions. We introduce ourselves to the Primary Investigators and chat with Emma about her rocket. The aurora is stronger tonight and while the sky is not exactly clear, it looks pretty good. But the launch viability is not determined by our local conditions; the launch is predicated on the sky’s conditions near the rocket’s apogee over Venetie, AK some 130 miles to the North. In Venetie, the clouds are thicker and refuse to blow away. The rockets sit on the launch pad as the control room waits for the go-ahead from their distant colleagues. While we wait, we set up an all sky camera and the spectrobinoculars to collect more data on the nights’ display and settle in to an eponymous game of Texas Hold ‘Em. As we wait, the aurora moves further south until it is overhead and we can make out rapid motions within the steady arcs. Vertical striations within the auroral bands dash from West to East away from the great swirling mass over the distant hills. Still the rocket count down holds at 15 minutes. As the night wears on, clouds roll in and the aurora grows dimmer through the haze. At about 2am the launch is scrubbed and we gather our gear and head back.
Wednesday morning, invigorated by the previous night’s display, we devise a plan. We already have cameras deployed at Harding Lake to the Southeast and Olnes Pond to the NorthWest, and we intend to return to PokerFlats to the Northeast of our base on Chena Ridge. Before the rocket launch window opens, we decide to head West to Granite Tors trailhead to set a few more cameras out for observation. To aide in the deployment (detail to come; the tomographic reconstructions we hope to compute are best suited to well-separated camera views), we rent cross country skis to better traverse the thigh deep snow. We drive down Chena Hot Springs Road and pull off at a bend in the river. After a crash course in skiing in the parking lot, we split up and head opposite directions to place the cameras as the sun sets. We ski out 30 minutes before turning back and skiing through the glimmering grotto by the light of our head lamps.
Unfortunately, the weather is worsening tonight. Back at poker, we are completely socked in with clouds and the launch is scrubbed by midnight. We drive back towards Fairbanks to sleep, and awake Thursday morning to a world shrouded in fog and cloud. The rocket launch is scrubbed early in the day, and will be until the clouds clear out over the weekend. We are nearly fully extended in our equipment deployment, and with wet weather in the forecast we decide to enact a rescue operation to recover all of the cameras. Splitting into three teams, we head to the three sites we have cameras – Harding Lake, Granite Tors, and Olnes Pond. Cameras safely back home, we settle in for a few days of rest and data analysis as we wait out the inclement weather.
It is now Sunday morning and sunlight has broken through the clouds. We are hopeful that conditions will be better as we gear up to set out our cameras again.