It's less than two months before the first Hot Countdown of the REXUS 6 student rocket campaign. Here are some details about the NISSE payload: The NISSE payload description The REXUS 6 rocket campaign is approaching. Currently, the first Hot Countdown is scheduled to be on the 10th March, 2009. Vidar Hølland from the NISSE team has been the main responsible of the mechanical design and construction of the experiment payload together with rocket engineers in the University of Bergen, Norway. The payload is almost ready and some details are described below. ...

Christmas is approaching fast and the NISSE team is busy, but let's have a look what happened few weeks ago considering the NISSE EISCAT activity. The longer the polar night gets the more suitable time it is for ground-based auroral measurements in the north. During a couple of weeks before the 'Above The Poles' day, several space physicists from the University of Oulu, the Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory and the Finnish Meteorological Institute, well wrapped to withstand the polar biting cold, were mobilized for the annual Finnish EISCAT measurement campaign. During the campaign, series of measurements were taken, including ev...

Background NISSE may evoke for some of us a short Elf type fellow with a long beard and a red knitted cap. According to an old tradition Norwegian farmers believe that if Nisse lives in their barns, they will be blessed. Therefore around Christmas when the Nisses are active, they prepare food for them and, believe it or not – it's always eaten up by the next morning! Some other readers may be familiar with the name NISSE because of a Norwegian s...

My research focuses on how Sámi were represented in text and images in four natural scientists' travel and scientific journals and letter correspondence during the nineteenth century. The scientists are Göran Wahlenberg (1780-1851), Lars Levi Læstadius (1800-1861), Sven Lovén (1809-1895) and Axel Hamberg (1863-1933). They were all based in Sweden, but did field studies and field research trips in the north of Finland, the north of Norway, the north of Sweden and Spitsbergen. Altar-piece from 1958 made by Bror Hjorth in the church of Jukkasjärvi, in the municipality of Kiruna in the north of Sweden. Lars Levi Læstadiu...

The mythical, historical and cultural past of the Sámi in 19th century northern scientific works – a tale about northern culture and northern natural landscape. Sven Lovén (1809-1895) depicted Sámi in his three combined travelling journal and scientific notebook that he wrote on his journey in northern Norway, northern Sweden and Spitsbergen in 1836-1838. Lovén made several types of representations of the Sámi such as ethnographical and anthropological ones as well as the ones he constructed out of references to literary work such as myths, fairy-tales and narratives about the Sámi. I will in this blog post look at the representations he made of Sámi with references to fictive, literary works. Lovén referred to literary works such as the epic Kale...

The Arctic has always been a difficult place to do any extensive monitoring and data collection. Until recently, there have only been a limited number of projects that have taken any significant, long-term, and coordinated observations of the Arctic Ocean and adjacent bodies of water. This is due in part to the extensive sea ice cover that persists over Arctic waters for a good part of the year, which makes it difficult to conduct ship surveys or deploy weather buoys and moorings to measure deep water currents. Arctic ROOS (Regional Ocean...

Where to begin? I am buzzing.. just buzzing. What a Day,- and half the world hasn't even woken up yet! Today is our sixth International Polar Day, and we are focusing on People in the Polar Regions. Plans for the day have been very experimental, very grassroots, much in line with IPY.. but with that comes that great big unknowingness.... will anyone join in? Will anyone turn up? Last night...

“Preserve the Polar Regions and Glaciers”: A major philatelic event for the closing of IPY in March 2009 Last Saturday September 20t 2008, at the “Austria Center Vienna”, a few steps from the UN Headquarter in Vienna, have been officially presented the major philatelic event concerning the “International Polar Year 2007-2009”. To pay tribute to all the efforts made during this fourth “International Polar Year” 2007-2009 and to deliver a strong message aimed at the whole world, the postal administrations of around 40 countries have decided to joint to produce a common stamp issue concerning the problem of the Global Warming and featuring the slogan “Preserve the Polar Regions and Glaciers”. Started ...

The scientific conference of Arctic Frontiers 2009, Arctic marine ecosystems in an era of rapid climate change (18-23 January 2009 in Tromso

Permafrost research makes you happy Photo: Dominik Langhamer Thanks to Hanne H. Christiansen from UNIS for the text of this clog, sent from the field. To follow their adventures or get more details about the course have a look at www.tspnorway.com ! In just one long day 10 m of mainly frozen sediment cores were collected from 4 different parts of the landscape here in NE Greenland using hand held drilling machines. Thermistor strings were installed down to 3.2 m below the terrain surface in the deepest hole. This was done by the Interna...