Dish is what I've been doing

The 42 meter dish

It's been a spectacular week, with some beautiful sights. 

This week contained the second half of our field work at the European Incoherent Scatter (EISCAT) RADARS. There are two dishes: the one up there ESR42 (42 meter), and the ESR32 (32 meter). The number is the diameter of the dish, they're pretty big! The 32 has gears so you can point it in different directions, the 42 is fixed looking down the magnetic field lines.

ESR = EISCAT Svalbard Radar

There they are! 

The work involves launching high power radio waves at the ionosphere and using the signal we get back to find out properties of the plasma up there.

Always working hard!

....or eating.

On the weekend we took some extra people with us on an Aberystwyth style hike. (A hike with a bit more talking)

It got quite cold on the way so we had a cuddle break. I say we, I mean these guys

Whilst on our trek we made some friends, they even started walking towards us! 

It wan't only the wildlife that provided some lovely pictures.

As a bonus we got to see the new pups getting trained to become sledge pullers. They were adorable,

Just yesterday we got to revisit EISCAT and spent some time in the dish. Then we had the opportunity to go visit SuperDarn. It is a coherent scatter RADAR and is very good at telling how fast the aurora is moving. It's very big and made mostly of wires so mind blowing pictures are a lot harder to take. But I got some of the bandwagon that brought us up.

After all the field work these past couple weeks we now have to write up a report, but that's not going to prevent us from adventuring! 

Ryan