I haven’t posted for the past few days as we move south. It’s been strange looking out of my porthole window and finding it to be dark outside after several weeks in persistent early twilight with sufficient light to enjoy the Arctic landscape. We also endured a couple of days of blizzard-like near white-out conditions with strong winds, blowing snow and low visibility.
We had a sunrise and sunset today, with the sun climbing slightly above the horizon for the first-time in 10 days. I wanted to write the exact times for sunrise and sunset, but three different sources gave me three widely differing times. While at home, we can look at the paper or do an internet search to find sunrise and sunset. It turns out not to be so simple in the far North.
Before I left for this trip, I did internet searches for charts showing the hours of daylight at different latitudes. Most of the time, my searches returned results for North Pole, Alaska, not for the geographical North Pole. There are also programs which do the calculation, but even those don’t necessarily agree. Perhaps the easiest way of making the calculation up here would be to just watch the sunrise and sunset. Unfortunately, the weather hasn’t be cooperating.
The poor weather conditions also brought science deployments to a complete halt. As the weather improved today, we’re doing a full science station with multiple deployments of instruments and equipment. It’s the first since we left 88 °N a few days ago. The lack of deployments was frustrating for the scientists on board, but all understand that we’re in the High Arctic and often in difficult weather and ice conditions. Most people entertained themselves by reading, playing card and board games, watching movies, playing ping pong, working out in the gyms, or catching up on sleep.
As the weather has improved today, I look forward to continuing to photograph the Arctic landscape.
Clouds, sun glow, grease ice, and a lead (for the ship)
Dark clouds, grease ice, and a lead
Abstract forms from broken ice in a lead