Credit: Stephane Vetter (Nuits sacrees) via APOD.NASA.GOV

Aurora are a frequent visitor to the dark skies in the high northern and southern latitudes. The winter skies in Alaska, Norway, Iceland, and Siberia experience aurora borealis, whereas down above the opposite hemisphere in Antarctica and far southern New Zealand are found the aurora australis. In the long, cold winter months of both hemipsheres, skies erupt with glimmering curtains of colorful light.

What causes aurora? Why are some of them green, some blue/yellow, and some red? Which are the most common, and which are rare? How come some places see them and some don’t, except under very unusual circumstances? When and where are the best times to see them? Let’s dig into auroras and find out.

Aurora are the result of high-energy charged particles bombarding and reacting with atoms in our upper atmosphere (specifically the ionosphere) at elevations ranging from 100-400 km (60-250 miles). These particles stream out from the sun constantly as what is known as “solar wind.” During periods of heightened solar activity called “coronal mass ejections” (CMEs or solar storms), the solar wind blows a tempest, hurling giant waves of charged particles larger than the Earth itself. The polar regions catch the brunt of the solar winds due to the converging lines of the earth’s magnetic field at the poles.

Travelling at around 1,400 miles per second, the solar wind smashes into nitrogen and oxygen atoms, causing them to convert the energy of the collisions into light, shedding photons which we see as aurora. Oxygen atoms emitting photons have a yellow-to-green tint, whereas nitrogen atoms create blue light if the atoms re-capture the electrons after ionization, and red if it returns to a normal, grounded state.

If we had neon atoms in our upper atmosphere, we would have orange auroras. Light elements such as hydrogen and helium from blue and purple auroras, but our eyes cannot typically perceive these colors against the dark night sky. The reddish ionoshpere aurora are rarest, forming when oxygen atoms at 400 km above the earth shed light.

Think of the different colored aurora like different neon lights in a store window sign. Those lights work by sending high voltage electricity (electrons) through a glass vacuum tube filled with atoms of specific elements. Each element, when energized by the electricity, lets off light of a different color. So when you see “live nude girls” on your way into a strip club in Vegas and each word is a separate color, you know that each one of the tubes that forms the letters of each word has a different element inside of it.

Earth just suffered through a fairly intense solar storm the week before last. During what was the largest solar storm in 7 years, magnificent auroras were seen by skywatchers in places that are known for  auroral displays such as Norway, Iceland, and Alaska. What was unusual however, was that that aurora were observed as far south as New York.

Auroras are typically found within 10-20 degrees of latitude from the earth’s poles. During solar storms, like the one we experienced last week, the electromagnetic effects reach much father south (or north in the case of aurora australis) as the intense solar wind showers the lower regions with charged ions and protons that flock to the magnetic flux lines which emanate from the poles.

CMEs cause more than just auroras in unusual locations. Satellites have to be re-positioned and powered down to protect sensitive on-board electronics. High-frequency radio communication is disrupted,and airlines re-route flights that typically traverse the earth’s north pole in an effort to both protect sensitive radio equipment on their jetliners, and also to reduce the amount of potentially cancer-causing radiation experienced by crew and passengers.

Solar Coronal Mass Ejections, from NASA.gov

Our sun averages around 2,000 solar storms in every 11-year long solar cycle. These cycles are measured by observations of sunspots, which are regions of the sun where magnetic activity erupts and disturbs the photosphere of the sun, showering earth with aurora-causing ions. Single CME events can shoot jets of plasma four or more hundred thousand miles from the sun.

The solar cycle was first discovered by Samuel Heinrich Schwabe in 1843. In 1859 during what is now called the Carrington event, a solar flare erupted on September 1st, which interrupted telegraph service, and caused auroras as far south as Cuba and Hawai`i. In the early 2000s, the sun has been experiencing what is known as deep solar minimum, with no visible sunspots on approximately 73% of the days in 2008. We are now ramping back up into the highest part of a solar maximum, as evidenced by the storm we saw in late January.

Solar cycles have been used as evidence for and against man-made climate change by both sides of the argument. Observations do show that the global average temperature can rise as much as 0.1 degree C as a direct result of solar variability. If you want to learn more about the solar cycle / climate link, start with this informative article over at Science Daily.

Click here to view the embedded video.

At least, until you see this one, which is even more mind-bending, and gives a great perspective on the sheer scale of auroras.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Other than flying to Reykjavik, northern Canada and Alaska are also good locations to go aurora hunting. Target your trips for the winter months if you head north, since the nights are long. Since we are in a solar maximum for the next year or so, conditions are ripe for auroras. Just don’t count on your GPS or Sat phone to save you if you take it deep into the dark backcountry – these communications tend to be the first to break down during intense aurora-causing solar storms. If you salivate for auroroa photos, check out the work of Terje Sørgjerd, Kiddi Krisjians, and Ole Salomonsen - they are all masterful aurora shooters. Happy hunting!

About the Author:

Truckee, CA-based, Hawai’i-born Grant Kaye creates colorful, vibrant, and evocative photographs that bring the viewer into the special landscapes he seeks out. In addition to being a passionate photographer, Kaye skis and hikes as often as he can. His professional background is in geology, volcanic hazards, and GIS/cartography. grantkaye.com

Some of you may remember a cartoon which appeared during World War I, a drawing showing an inquisitive stranger talking with the gateman at a railway crossing. The gate was painted with the usual black and white stripes, and lying on the river beyond the tracks was a steamer painted with similar markings. The stranger asked, “Why do they paint the stripes on the gate?” And the gateman answered, “Oh, that’s to make them more visible.”

And then the stranger asked, “Well, why do they paint the stripes on the vessel out there?” And the gateman replied, “Oh, that’s to make the ship less visible.”

-Everett Warner [paraphrased from his lecture notes]

A ships in costume, gCaptain brings you Razzle Dazzle; history’s most unusually painted ship. What is Razzle Dazzle? GoTouring.com tells us;

During World War I, the British and Americans faced a serious threat from German U-boats. All attempts to camouflage ships at sea had failed, as the appearance of the sea and sky are always changing.  Any color scheme that was concealing in one situation was conspicuous in others. A British artist and naval officer, Norman Wilkinson, promoted a new camouflage scheme that was derived from the artistic fashions of the time, particularly cubism. Instead of trying to conceal the ship, it simply broke up its lines and made it more difficult for the U-boat captain to determine the ship’s course. The British called this camouflage scheme “Dazzle Painting.” The Americans called it “Razzle Dazzle.”

Artists were enlisted to draw up the camouflage designs. Early in the war, designs were drawn for individual ships, with each ship having its own distinctive pattern. As the war progressed, standard patterns were devised and applied to large numbers of ships. Even the great passenger liners were camouflaged for the duration of the War.

It is unfortunate that there are no color photographs of these WWI ships. People who witnessed convoys of dazzle painted ships reported that the scene was quite dramatic. Imagine sailing across the North Atlantic surrounded by dozens of brightly painted ships, each in different colors and patterns. If you compare the colored drawing with the black and white photograph of the ship “War Clover”, you can get an idea of how much we are missing. Read More…

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The problem confronting a submarine, once his prey has been sighted, resolves itself solely into estimating course and speed of the target, in order to determine how the approach to torpedo fire position should be made. The “dazzle” system of painting is based on this one consideration and that is, of rendering the problem confronting a submarine more difficult, confusing him as to how his approach shall be made and thereby adding in some degree to the safety of the vessel attacked.

U.S. Admiral William S. Sims (1917)

Camopedia has this amazing information on the World War I design team assigned to the project;

ONE METHOD camoufleurs might have used (but did not, apparently) to generate a large number of unique dazzle schemes is the stencil method.

It is indebted to American artist Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921), sometimes called “the father of camouflage,” who (circa 1909) devised a clever, easy way for individuals to design their own camouflage, using cut-out silhouettes.

Whatever the surrounding, said Thayer, a person “has only to cut out a stencil of the soldier, ship, cannon or whatever figure he wishes to conceal, and look through this stencil from the viewpoint under consideration, to learn just what costume from that viewpoint would most tend to conceal this figure.” However, the purpose of dazzle camouflage was confusion, not concealment, so, in the examples below, we have used the silhouette as a mask with which to “find” valuable dazzle designs in an abstract, geometric plan. In studies of human vision, Gestalt psychologists and others have investigated embedded figures or “puzzle pictures” (Wolfgang Köhler called them “camouflaged figures”) in which a simple shape has been adroitly hidden within a larger, more complex surrounding.

In pre-computer days, one could make arbitrary compositions in art by overlapping “systems” on layers of tracing paper, viewed on a light table. Today, it is ever so easy to do the same thing (and much more) by using the “layers” function in software such as Adobe Photoshop. This could have been useful as a way to generate dazzle designs, had all that been available in World War I.

If you are looking for more information on this topic be sure to read things magazine‘s extensive ship camouflage links section.

The rumored origins of the giant beach-going lego man have reached that of mythical proportions over the past couple years.  The man first appeared just offshore the Dutch resort of Zandvoort in 2007, where stunned spectators made a daring rescue thinking it was real person.  Then again in 2008, the lego man has washed up on a beach in Brighton, UK leaving residents puzzled as to its origins.

Is a giant child somewhere missing a beloved toy? Is a Lego factory producing mutant rogue lego-men?

Unfortunately the real story may not be so interesting.  The lego-man is the work of aspiring artist, Ego Leonard, who may or may not be the lego man himself.  “I am glad I crossed over” Leonard said in an email to Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “Although it was a hell of a [swim]. Nice weather here and friendly people. I think I am gonna stay here for a while.”

Why Florida and why now remains a mystery.

This has to be the most out there, exotic, ridiculous “ski” vacations ever offered in the history of the world. We kid you not, a company based out of London is now making it possible to ski through the Caribbean Sea, and in relative terms, it’s not as expensive as one might think. Then again, the term “ski” must be applied loosely.

The company IgluCruise is hosting this once-in-a-lifetime unique sailing trip that will travel from the tropical island of Barbados with scheduled stops in Grenada, Tobago, Isla Margarita, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent before returning back to Barbados. The trip is set to depart on December 15^th, 2011 with prices starting as low as 799 British pounds. The price tag includes round-trip airfare from the UK, accommodation, food, room service, a 36 person Jacuzzi at the base of the “ski” slope, steam room, fitness center, ski and boot rental, and lift passes.

Related to “ skiing” the ship features:

-A 150 meter-long open-air ski slope on its top deck

-A ski surface made of Perma-Snow, which is an all weather ski carpet

- A poma lift that will facilitate the ability for up to 1,129 passengers to be “skiing” as the ship sails through its tropical destinations.

Now the term “ski” and “skiing” has to be heavily quoted here as “skiers” will be sliding on a faux snow surface, with skis, on a boat, while traveling through tropical waters. I think it’s a stretch to actually call it skiing, then again, speaking to the uniqueness of this idea, what a trip it’s going to be for people to be linking turns on a cruise ship sailing across the famed waters of the Caribbean Sea. This is not a ski trip most of us would ever consider, then again name another time you’ve heard of such a trip being offered.

Again, I have a tough time actually calling this a ski trip, but the fact of the matter is this trip is happening, people will be using skis and ski boots to slide down Perma-snow on the trip, on a moving boat, and it really is one of the more unique trips I’ve ever read about that brings a sense of ski culture to a tropical destination.

For more information and specifics regarding the trip click here.

Photo courtesy Chris Wolfenden

With most of today’s news being rather depressing, I thought I’d lighten the mood a little bit with this photo from last weeks “Burning Man Festival” taking place in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.  How they get this thing to the middle of the desert is beyond me.

Never heard of Burning Man?  Click HERE to find out more about this once a year festival dedicated to “community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance.”

The captain got stuck in the bathroom because of a jammed lock and yelled for help, the article quoted the coast guard as saying.  One of the ferry’s crew managed to slow the vessel down but unfortunately it was too late, and the vessel ran aground on a rock near Helsinki.

Some minor injuries were reported, as well as some cosmetic damage to the vessel.  The coast guard is investigating whether the captain’s actions were criminal, but hey, at least he wasn’t drinking.

Those of you from Finland can read the Coast Guard release HERE.

Image by Murad Sezer / Reuters

Or maybe the backhoe and the barge were in cahoots the whole time and decided to make a run for it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Via gCaptain Forum

By John J. Miller

Tropical Storm Emily petered out over Cuba last week, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warns of “high hurricane activity” in the months ahead, with three to five major hurricanes forming in the Atlantic Ocean and threatening coastlines. Next on the NOAA’s list of nicknames is Franklin, followed by Gert and Harvey. By December, we’ll know what became of them, as well as whether the storm-desk professionals made it all the way down their alphabetical list to Tammy, Vince and Whitney.

A little more than three centuries ago, a violent tempest with no name—and no meteorological forewarning—ripped through England. It was probably the fiercest storm in British history, which is saying something for an island whose inhabitants are famous for gripes about the weather. Yet it left more than a legacy of destruction. It also became a source of creative inspiration, giving birth to the first substantial work of modern journalism: “The Storm,” by Daniel Defoe.

On the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 24, 1703, Londoners felt the first strong breezes. By 4 p.m., the winds had picked up. The worst of the storm was still more than two days away, but that night the gusts were powerful enough to knock over part of a house and nearly crush Defoe, who was then a minor poet and pamphleteer in his early 40s. If he had died in that moment, he would not have gone on to scale the heights of English literature 16 years later with “Robinson Crusoe.”

When the storm struck, Defoe was fresh from prison. He had written a satirical tract on the religious intolerance of high-church Anglicans. For this offense he was fined, placed in a pillory and jailed for several months. Upon his release, Defoe was desperate for money to support his family and wrote at a frantic clip. The scholar Paula R. Bachscheider estimates that more than 400,000 words poured from his pen over the next year. About 75,000 of them went into “The Storm,” the first book-length work of his career.

After Defoe’s close call with the collapsing house, the winds remained high in London. On the night of Friday, Nov. 26, Defoe looked at his barometer. He had never seen the mercury so low and suspected that “the Tube had been handled and disturb’d by the Children.” Defoe rarely wrote about private matters, but in this line he provides a brief glimpse into what must have been a boisterous family life with six children.

As Friday turned into Saturday, the storm unleashed its full fury. The wind shrieked and homes rattled. “Most People expected the Fall of their Houses,” wrote Defoe. Even so, they judged it safer to stay put than to seek new shelter: “Whatever the Danger was within doors, ’twas worse without; the Bricks, Tiles, and Stones, from the Tops of the Houses, flew with such force, and so thick in the Streets, that no one thought fit to venture out, tho’ their Houses were near demolish’d within.” From start to finish, the mayhem lasted an entire week.

The human toll was substantial: 123 dead in and around London and an estimated 8,000 drowned at sea, including about one-fifth of the sailors in the queen’s navy. The physical wreckage was equally immense, with 800 houses flattened, 400 windmills demolished and the newly built Eddystone Lighthouse, off England’s southern coast, washed away. Whole forests blew over. On a tour of Kent, Defoe started to count the fallen trees but quit at 17,000, having grown “tired with the Number.” So it’s little wonder that he reached for superlatives to describe what he called “The Greatest, the Longest in Duration, the widest in Extent, of all the Tempests and Storms that History gives any Account of since the Beginning of Time.”

Defoe’s eyewitness account is valuable, but his real innovation was to collect the observations of others. Journalism was then in its infancy, and there was nothing like systematic and objective reporting on contemporary events. Within a week of the storm’s strike, however, Defoe was running newspaper ads that asked readers to submit stories. He and his publisher, John Nutt, must have regarded this invitation as an investment, knowing that they would absorb the cost of correspondence: In those days, the recipients of mail paid for postage.

While Defoe waited for the stories, he learned everything he could about the science of weather. He also contemplated metaphysical lessons: “I cannot believe any Man so rooted in Atheistical Opinions, as not…to apprehend the Possibility of a Supreme Being, when he felt the terrible Blasts of this Tempest.”

All of this appeared the following summer in “The Storm,” which might be called the world’s first instant book. The heart of the manuscript contains about 60 accounts of the tempest from around England, selected and excerpted by Defoe. He regarded them as truthful because “most of our Relators have not only given us their Names, and sign’d the Accounts they have sent, but have also given us Leave to hand their Names down to Posterity.” And so the name Elizabeth Luck survives along with her report from Tunbridge Wells, where hundreds of trees fell down, a church lost its steeple, and two horses perished beneath a smashed stable.

Like any good reporter, Defoe understood the importance of drama and human-interest stories. A letter from the Rev. James King of London tells of a chimney that crashed through a house and buried a maid. She was feared dead, but emerged the next morning from a small cavity in the rubble. Thomas Powell, a shopkeeper in Deal, was so appalled that his neighbors would not rescue sailors stranded on a sandbar that he paid them five shillings per head to help out. Defoe credits Powell’s initiative with saving 200 lives. Defoe also relates grimmer anecdotes, including the tale of the captain of a leaky ship who tried to escape his fate by committing suicide—only to have his vessel survive.

“The Storm” was not a best seller. A proposed sequel with additional material never went to press—a reminder that journalism and book publishing, for all of their occasional pretensions, are ultimately commercial enterprises and vulnerable to the whims of consumers. Yet Defoe had invented a new way to examine the world, and today’s journalists are his descendants.

Mr. Miller is director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College.

Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

14 sailors aboard the OSM Arena are about to be released after spending an astonishing 17 months at sea anchored off Chennai Port in India.

The vessels’ crew – made up of mostly Koreans and some Myanmarese – started their hitch in October 2009, but work came to a court ordered halt when the ship was detained off the coast of Chennai in early 2010 due to a financial dispute between the ship’s owner and a Kolkata-based cargo supplier.

Now, 17 months later, The Madras High Court has ordered the release of the crew, and that the vessel owner – the Korean based Shinhan Capital Company Limited – pay the crew in full for their troubles.

The captain of the Arena, Kyaw Lin Tun, said the each crew member had lost about 20kg, were under tremendous mental strain and all the ships equipment had become defunct, according to the Times of India.

Pictured: The OSM Arena’s current position via MarineTraffic.com

What does it take to be an American Badass? Well strikingly rugged good looks help (only because it attract strikingly good-looking ladies) but bravery, a keen intellect and an attitude of command are absolute prerequisites. A good character is also essential. Take our first nominee, Joe Hazlewood, who infamously commanded the Exxon Valdez. Yes Joe liked to drink (what badass doesn’t?), and the American public still hates him (Badass isn’t a popularity contest after all), but he garnered their hate by doing a badass thing… standing tall in front of the man and taking the blame for others mistakes.

So here is gCaptain’s list of Top 5 Modern American Maritime Badasses. Many more could have been mentioned but we limited the entries to candidates who live (after all, true badasses don’t die). That said, if you know of another maritime badass then write their names in the comments below. We’ll likely ignore them but it will give us a heads up when the true badasses we forgot hike to gCaptain HQ to kick our…

Honorable Mention: Joe Hazelwood

As if being born to a Marine Corps torpedo bomber pilot and spending his college years in the Bronx wasn’t enough Uncle Joe gains our admiration for becoming master of the Exxon Philadelphia a tanker that ended its career in the same way as Joe’s… in explosion. Just seven years later Captain Joe took the helm of the Exxon Chester and fearlessly ran her out of New York Harbor straight into a storm. High winds damaged the ship’s mast including radar and radio communications antennas and the crew prepared to abandon ship but Hazelwood rallied them guiding the ship to safety. On March 24, 1989 Captain Joe’s leadership was tried again when he gallantly battled an ominously named navigational hazard called Bligh Reef. Despite Bligh’s reputation for damaging previous ships, including Alaska Steamship Company’s Olympia in 1910, he foolishly trusted a junior mate to navigate past the hazard but regained his composure in time to battle national media, a major oil conglomerate and the United States Coast Guard. And Won! By taking lone blame for the grounding he won our admiration and, though vilified by the nation, he won his license back, fended off Exxon’s legal blame and thumbed his nose at every pitiless Captain who blames others for their mistakes.

5: Doug Pine

The crew of Deadliest Catch boats certainly earn the badass stamp of approval but not the top five list… no for that you need to do more than to battle big waves in a small boat. Fishing boats are fairly maneuverable, if the weather gets to bad they can heave-to the swell, but imaging battling the same conditions tied to a 10,000 ton lease? Well Doug Pine not only dreams this scenario but lived it. On June 26, 2011, the Tug Aries, under Doug’s command began listing in heavy sea over 100 miles from dry land. Did Doug break down and cry (like so many of us would)? No, instead he directed the crew to pull on their “leash”, a cable the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s arms circa 1982, to pull in – and board – the barge they were towing. When his handheld radio proved too wimpy he broke into a super-sized pickup to hail a passing chopper on its CB radio. With the CB radio in one hand and his iPhone recording video in the other, he directed the rescue of all crew members aboard. If that wasn’t enough, on his earlier job he witnessed officers of the Korean fishing boat he commanded beating the crew… not acceptable behavior for an American Badass like Doug who threw the wheel over on the boat, landed on the beach of a nearby island, and marched the offenders into the arms of the Coast Guard. Badass indeed!

4: James S. Nolan

On a blustery october in 1985 San Francisco Bar pilot James S. Nolan boarded the tanker Puerto Rican which contained over 38,000 barrels of lubrication oil and bunkers. At 3:24 AM as he was disembarking outside San Francisco Bay Entrance Channel, the flammable cargo below him exploded, which blew flames several hundred feet into the air, knock Nolan and two crew members into the water, and folded back an immense section of the deck measuring nearly 100 feet square. An explosion of that magnitude would have caused most men to run home to their moms but not Nolan, he turned the tragedy into a passion for safety and soon joined the Navy SEAL teams in Little Creek Virginia, not to practice shooting large guns, no Nolan becoming the driving force behind model ships simulators. Yes small model ships which he jumps into, ignoring the basic principles of buoyancy, and toots around wind-swept lakes around the country all in the interest of teaching the mariners how to drive a ship.

3: Chief Engineer Mike Perry

Mike Perry knew his Captain, Richard Phillips had drawn a course line straight through unprotected waters, he knew the pirates were active and he knew his engines could not outrun pirate boats… but none of that stopped him from boarding the Maersk Alabama to depart for Mombasa, Kenya in April 2009. When the pirates attacked his ship, Mike Perry took matters into his own hands by initially directing the firing of flares at the pirates, and then by taking local control of the ship’s steering and swinging the ship’s rudder by hand to avoid the invaders. When that eventually failed, he rallied the crew in the bowels of the ship’s engine room and manually killed the ship’s power, rendering it useless to the intruders. Using the dark to his advantage, Chief Perry remained atop his massive engines lying in wait, knife in hand, for the pirates to visit his dark lair. Soon his pray, the pirate ringleader, emerged and Perry jumped down to fight his opponent in hand-to-hand combat. With the ringleader taken he negotiated for the exchange of his Captain but, when that failed, he escorted the pirates and Captain Phillips to the lifeboats, dropped them from his ship and called Seal Team 6. For his actions in saving the ship, and his crew without killing anyone, Mike is a true maritime bad-ass.

2) Max Hardberger

Max Hardberger claims to have successfully repossessed every single boat that he’s been commissioned to return, usually at the cost of about $100,000 a boat, and has apparently repossessed about 20 boats. His methods are creative, and usually, non-violent. Hardberger once repoed a freighter from the Russian Mafia in the ice-covered Baltic port of Vladivostok, Russia. One time he captured a ship in Central America by hiring a prostitute to flirt with the guards and give them shots of booze lined with Hardberger’s-homemade handy-dandy insta-sedatives. During the Haitian Revolution of 2004, Hardberger sailed into the battle-torn hive of destruction in the middle of a warzone, boarded a ship pretending to be a potential buyer, and got his men to distract the guards while he snuck off, repaired a damaged engine, and cut the anchor chains with a blowtorch. Another time in Haiti, he used a Voodoo witch doctor to freak out a crew of AK-47 slinging pirates and send them running from the ship. In Venezuela he straight-up convinced the guards that the fucking ship was sinking, and he did such a good job of it that the entire crew of bad guys all ran to the life boats and rowed back to shore, leaving Max and his buddies plenty of time to leisurely pull the ship out of dock. More recently, he’s hired a team of ex-Special Forces operatives to help him extract ships from Somali pirates armed with assault rifles and RPGs. Look for Clint Eastwood, or another Hollywood Badass, to play Max in the upcoming movie of his book Seized
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1) TBD

Who is number 1 on the list? Well… you tell us! Nominations are open in the comments below.

Note: some of these stories have been exaggerated for dramatic effect but, the Baddasses mentioned are all the genuine article, guaranteed.