Sunday, November 20, 2005
I know its a bit boring, but as its where we've been studying for the last month or so I thought I'd include some pictures of the interior of the new UNIS building. This is the new reception area. As you can see they like their wood and copper!
Just to give you an idea of what the permanent darkness is like, this photo is looking up at Longyearbyen from UNIS. I think it was taken at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon! It gets a tiny bit lighter in the morning, but that's getting less and less now so its pretty much dark all the time!
We visited Mine 7 as a small field trip in our Geology course, just before we started revising for our exams. It was amazing to go into a working mine. The mining methods are much more modern than the ones that I saw used in Mine 3. Its much more mecanised and they probably mine the coal much much faster than they used to. As you can see we all looked great in our overalls and hard hats!!
For some reason I ended up with loads of pictures of fire that night! The main fuel for the fire was a large pile of furniture behind the sailing club. I'm not sure where it came from originally, but it burnt pretty well! The picture on the right is of Henry, Joe, Heather and Sarah getting toasted by the fire! It was a memorable bonfire night morning!!
These were taken on the 4th of November at the Sailing Club Party. It was really great timing, as we wanted to celebrate bonfire night, and luckily we got to do it in style as they had a big bonfire! The Nordsyssel was also docked at the harbour, just across from where we were having the party on the beach. It ended up being a really good night!
Thought I'd include some nice weather that we've had!! It got a bit windy in Nybyen one Sunday evening!!
This is at the swimming pool in Svalbardhallen. We're all playing kayak polo, which as you probably guessed is water polo, but in kayaks!! Its good fun, but can get a bit brutal! As it was my first time, I was just happy to keep away from the big ruck over the ball, and content to just paddle about on my own! (top right corner!)
These are of the Northern lights! These were the best ones I've seen so far, but I think there have been better ones! It was amazing to see, as you could see them moving across the sky! I think they went on for bout 20 minutes or more! I was trying to use my other camera to get really good pictures, but it decided it didn't want to work! They were unbelievable to watch though!
This is Nybyen and Longyearbyen from Barrack 11 on a fairly clear night when the moon was out, and its amazing how much illumination it can provide when light pollution is at a minimum!
These are of my field work on the rock glacier again. I dug two more pits to assess the depth of the active layer at various locations on the rock glacier, and to describe any interesting features within the rock layer. The ice crystals in the photo just grew on the underside of the rocks at the surface of the active layer.
These are of me in the cave, crawling through into another section, through a very small gap, and then, as I was lying on the frozen meltwater stream. The amount of rock debris in the roof of the cave ice is unbelievable! For my first experience in a cave it was pretty exciting!
There were some wierd structures which I can only describe as ice stalagmites (left) which had formed in the fist large cavern that we went into, presumably forming from meltwater dripping very slowly from the roof. There were also loads of tiny needle-like icicles on the roof of the cave in the thinner parts of the cave. Although I think we broke quite a few as we were crawling through it!
The photo on the left is of Henry sitting on what would be the meltwater stream in the summer. The photo on the right is of the ice in the roof of the cave, containing a lot of rock material completely encased in ice, with tiny icicles all around them.
At the Larsbreen moraine, there's a moraine cave which goes below the rock glacier that I'm studying, and continues right through the moraine, until it reaches the glacier ice! The picture on the left is of Joe crawling through the cave entrance, and the one on the right includes the roof and the floor of the cave just to give you an idea of how small the cave was. In the summer, the cave is hollowed out by a meltwater channel, but in winter it freezes, allowing you to go inside and explore all of the rock and ice.
