Melanie Windridge's Blog, page 8
October 4, 2016
The surprising power of a solar storm
During solar storms the Earth’s atmosphere receives huge amounts of energy from the charged particles and ultraviolet radiation hitting it. A big solar storm can dump as much energy in the atmosphere as could power the whole of New York City for 2 years! Some of this energy we see as the aurora, but the atmosphere also heats up, and 95% of this energy is radiated back into space by carbon dioxide and nitric oxide.
There really is so much more power up there than meets the eye as the aurora!
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September 20, 2016
Photography tips from CAG
When I was on Orkney earlier this month for the Orkney Science Festival I was lucky to spend some time with members of the Caithness Astronomy Group – Gordon Mackie, Maciej Winiarczyk and Stewart Watt (who all featured in my book sharing their stories of seeing the aurora in Scotland). They are all keen auroral photographers and have had their photographs published in numerous magazines.
In the evenings we went out looking for aurora. We weren’t lucky enough to get good northern lights displ...
September 13, 2016
Thoughts on Women in Science
This post is in response to comments on my Facebook page in relation to the Nature article Women in physics face big hurdles – still.
Read the original post and comments:
Image of my original post on Facebook. Click to read the comments.
To David,
Thank you for your comments about women in science. I hope you don’t mind me addressing them more fully than the Facebook comment section allows. Here are some of my thoughts on the subject in response to yours.
Firstly, I don’t think sexual harassm...
September 7, 2016
Tales of an aurora addict 2
A year later I tried my aurora luck again at Whitehorse, Canada – with limited success, but at least I could play sillybillys in the snow with dogsled mushing, snowmobiling and a plane flight to see the frozen lakes.
If you missed it, read the first part of Rosie’s story.
Aurora seen from Whitehorse, Canada.
After an abortive Autumn attempt in Finland (where the only thing of note I saw was the inside of an A&E Dept after someone decided a night trek in the snow was a good idea) I decided to...
August 25, 2016
Tales of an aurora addict 1
A polar bear in Churchill, Canada.
I think I can trace my fascination for the Aurora back to 2007. After 3 months of enforced time off work following knee surgery I came up with the idea of seeing the polar bears at Churchill, Canada. As well as meeting over a dozen of these magnificent creatures at close quarters while out on the tundra at night I had an all too brief view of a wonderous bright green light that changed its shape and intensity as I watched. I was hooked!
So for my 50th birthd...
August 10, 2016
Getting that winning shot
This Aurora Story is a glimpse into what it takes to get *that* aurora shot.
Arild Heitmann’s photograph ‘Sumo Waggle Adventure’ was highly commended for the 2015 Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. It was taken at the Lomaas River in Skånland, Norway.
In this video made by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, we find out about the extreme conditions aurora photographers sometimes face to get the perfect shot.
Visit the Royal Observatory Greenwich website to read more about...
July 28, 2016
Wanting my life back…
Whilst making my afternoon cup of tea today, squished into a gap between emails about fusion energy education, finding promotional aurora photos for a magazine, and worrying about the ever-lengthening To Do list, I found myself thinking, à la Nigel Farage, “I want my life back!”
But then I thought, “Hey, lady, this is your life. And you love it!”
If I won the lottery tomorrow I really don’t know what I would give up.
I love working in fusion energy and I’m so excit...
July 26, 2016
How NOT to photograph the aurora
Here’s how NOT to take a photograph of the Aurora Borealis while in the Orkney Islands:
(1) Take the photograph in the summer when there is still twilight in the sky
(2) Make sure it’s a partially cloudy evening
(3) And when there’s a full moon
(4) Take the photograph hand-held, without a tripod, using only the roof of the car as a prop
Follow these simple instructions and it will look like this:
Northern Lights over Orkney on a cloudy, moonlit night.
Here’s what happened.
We were visiting...
June 30, 2016
Mapiraju (5424m)
Saturday 18th June 2016
For our attempt on Mapiraju we returned to the Cayesh valley but, this time, we walked right to the end to pitch our camp. We looked back down the valley towards the hulking peak of Ranrapalca and across the river to a chunky ice-fall where the glacier calved off the cliff edge. It was hot in the afternoon sun as we rested in our new camp.
Afternoon view from my tent, looking back down the valley towards Ranrapalca.
On the morning of 18th June we left camp around 6am,...
Jatunmontepunchu (5421m)
Wednesday 15th June 2016
Jatunmontepuncu (also known as Huapi or referred to as Peak J in our camp), was climbable from base camp in a single push, but we decided to split it over two days since we had time. On 14th June we walked up through the steep zig-zags to the meadow area that we had visited several times during acclimatisation hikes. We camped beside a small lake at around 4900m altitude. We were close to the moraine that we had to ascend to reach the glacier in the morning.
Up here,...
