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Welcome to Darkness 4 All, a blog about my research in light pollution... Andy

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UFO in Kilpisjärvi part 2 - light pillars and ice road runner

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It was fun being in the snowy desert during day - but our misssion is to measure light at night. After dinner Franz and I hit the road...we earn confused looks from our lake physics friends..."You want to get out now? Not go to sauna after this busy and cold day?" - Aaargh thanks for the reminder ;) When outside, we are amazed by the view above Kilpisjärvi village. The ice fog creates "light pillars" a phenomenon where flat ice crystals float in the lower atmosphere and create some sort of giant mirror reflecting only the light emitted directly upwards towards your observation point (see wikipedia here and nicer pictures on twitter ). These pillars look bizarrely and the most spectacular thing is that every car approaching us is creating the same moving "light pillar"....pretty stunning. During our hunt for darkness we measure night sky brightness values down to 21.5-21.6 mags (so near natural). Every now and then ice-fog or clouds appear and
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Dashing through the snow....

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If one wants to evaluate the impact of light pollution on lakes (or other ecosystems) it is required to put it in context with natural nocturnal but also with daylight. Daylight is supposed to be a lot. If you look into a text book it is 100 000 lx or a bit more....well here in the sub-arctics (Kilpisjärvi is at about 69° N) just 1 month after winter solstice it peaks at around 600 lx on a cloudy "day" (that is less then the textbook value at sunset of around 800lx).   Todays task is to measure the light on the lake and under the ice. So Franz and I jump back into our cool explorer suits and pull the seldge with the equipment onto the lake, where the snowmobile is waiting for a fun ride.   Our lake physics friends drop us off about 500 m from shore with our generator, light measurement devices, shovel, sledge and a drill. Although they have no time, they show us how to drill the hole in the ice.... Their task today is to do a transect. That means mea
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Disko in Abisko feat. Aurora Bo Realis & The Freezing Toes \,,/

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...so I got a room in Abisko in Abisko National Park , one of my favorite places in Scandinavia! I took a room with a window (same price as without window...so what do you pick?). However, you dont have blinds. Well, doesnt matter its arctic night, right? Ironically,I got a fancy LED color changing triple flood-light installation right in front of my window 😁. Disco in Abisko! Well that's very anoying. Luckily room has a 3 person bunk bed so I can use the sheets to cover the window. The evening got worse when I saw that the sky is not clear (forecast was clear) but Abisko is covered in (icy) fog resulting in a "nice" orange fog-glow. SQM reading was around 16 mags. Illuminace was 0.2lx with only few direct contributions. So I went to sleep a bit as the last night was really exhausting. Set the alarm to 10pm. Got up same fog soup 😠. Well I am here to do measurements at all weather conditions so I jumped in the car and drove through that soup. I ex
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