Some intense weeks on Helmer Hanssen and in Ny-Ålesund are over. The Marine Night participants are back at home (or at UNIS), trying to make sense out of the massive amount of data that has been collected during the campaign – to shed some light on the dark of Polar… Continue reading
“Do var en do”, or “das was das” as they say in German… Final day in the field, and all goes down into boxes. This morning two planes loaded with students, researchers and equipment left Ny-Ålesund for Longyearbyen. Left here in Ny-Ålesund were only the last 15 people with the… Continue reading
[Spanish below] I long believed that this sentence, from a Spanish song by Fito & Los Fitipaldis, did not make much sense. The best of the sun is its own brightness and wonderful warmth. After spending a month of January in the complete darkness of Svalbard – first on board… Continue reading
She was in a hurry. Time seemed to have slipped un-noted through her fins. It wasn’t the first time. But why was she here, then, in the icy Kongsfjord at 79° N, on a dark January day, nearly 12 degrees latitude from the traditional spawning area off the North Norwegian… Continue reading
We are challenging the common perception that the polar night is void of life. First, we measured the photosynthetic capability of macro algae in the extreme light limited environment. Surprisingly we found that the dark-acclimated macro algae were capable of utilizing light that was put into the system in a… Continue reading
When I started to tell my colleagues back home in Oslo that I will be going to Ny-Ålesund in January to measure photosynthesis in the dark, they just laughed at me. Photosynthesis is the process that algae (and plants) use to make biomass from CO2 and water, using the energy… Continue reading
When the polar night appears black for most eyes and even sensors, new equipment is on board the UNIS course to measure the “unseen” light. Two new prototypes which just arrived before departure from the mainland, has now been deployed and tested for the first time. The results are surprisingly… Continue reading
There is no doubt that the creatures of the night are active also in the long Polar Night. Check out this amazing underwater video by Robert Staven, shot during the Marine Night campaign just outside the Marine Lab of Kings Bay.
…anything might happen! Have you ever wondered what too much UBATing does to humans? Well, here is the answer:
Greetings from Ny-Alesund in Svalbard! As this is written we are surrounded by a very special phenomenon. It occurs during the arctic wintertime and is called the polar night. In Svalbard the polar night last for approximately two and a half months each year. While people in other parts of… Continue reading
Our work in Ny-Ålesund has reached a new phase. A rather large amount of data is starting to pile up, and thus some time needs to be allocated to actually processing all the data we have. As there are a lot of Norwegians around, let’s take a moment to… Continue reading
We started our course in Longyearbyen, Svalbard and have made our way to the world’s most Northerly settlement, Ny Ålesund. The journey to Ny Ålesund is quite an adventurous experience and involved a half hour flight over moonlit mountains in a very small plane. Not only is Ny Ålesund the… Continue reading
Yesterday we left Longyearbyen with all our equipment, colleges and students. Months of planning and preparing have ended, and we are now in place in Ny-Ålesund where we will carry out the largest polar night expedition ever conducted (at least to our knowledge). It took us two and a half… Continue reading
