Fabio Del Sordo edited untitled.tex  about 9 years ago

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Some months ago, fall 214, during a chat with a fellow astrophysicist, I realized 2015 would have been a quite busy year for me, due to a combination of science projects, outreach with the \href{http://constellationproject.org}{GalileoMobile Constellation} and other travels. At that time I had recently started a postdoc at Yale, in the research group led by \href{http://users.math.yale.edu/users/wettlaufer/John_Wettlaufer/JSW.html}{John Wettlaufer}, an expert on sea ice and the Arctic.   Since many years I felt the urge of visiting the northernmost area of the Earth, and I started fulfilling this need during my PhD in Stockholm, with travels to Lapland and the north western Norvegian coastine. The Arctic, though, is a different story and, at that time, to me it was nothing else than a vague but intriguing place, oftentimes feeding my imagination.   During this postdoc, I thought, I will have to visit Svalbard, connecting my travel to a research project. My research focuses, at the moment, on the search of exoplanets and the characterization of their magnetic fields.   However, the idea behind any research I start is pretty much always the same: I study it because it fascinates me, and the Arctic is full of phenomena that I cannot see how they could not trigger a deep interest. The sea ice, constantly freezing and melting, harbors amazing things like \href{http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2014/04/frost-flower-garden.html}{frost flowers}, as well as life in extreme conditions; the upper atmosphere hosts spectacles like Northern Lights. Nevertheless, I am almost unable to organize a journey in absence of an initial spark deciding when this is going to happen. In this case, the fire was lit during the chat I was mentioned. “I would like to travel to Svalbard sooner or later” - I said. “For the Eclipse, you mean?” “WoW, is there an eclipse at Svalbard? For real?”