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European Space Weather Week 2023
In mid-November Craig and Daniel Mac Manus left Dunedin to travel to Europe. The main focus of the trip was the 19th European Space Weather Week (ESWW2023) which occurred in Toulouse, France. Craig and Daniel both presented posters – Craig’s on the Solar Tsunamis research project, and Daniel on GIC mitigation. Solar Tsunamis research team members Mark Clilverd, Andrew Lapthorn, Tim…
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Expedition 15 to Antarctica
On 1 November, 2023 James Brundell and Daniel Mac Manus took off from Christchurch heading for Scott Base, Antarctica. James and Daniel make up Otago Space Physics Expedition 15, which was hoped to involve only a short trip to Scott Base. The main goal was to examine noise levels on our VLF electric field antenna near Scott Base, but also to collect…
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National Grid UK Technical Talk
On the 8th of November, Mark Clilverd from the British Antarctic Survey delivered an online seminar to National Grid, an energy company operating in the UK and US, titled “Managing the impact of solar flares in the UK – preparing for an extreme event“. There was much interest in this technical talk, and it was…
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Welcome to new team members
Welcome to Xinhu Feng 1 October 2023: The Space Physics research group is happy to welcome Mr. Xinhu Feng who is joining the Solar Tsunamis project as a new PhD student. Xinhu is going to be supervised by Prof. Craig Rodger, working on reactive power during space weather events. Welcome to Xinhu, both to our…
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General Lecture at URSI GASS 2023 in Japan
The 35th General Assembly of the International Union of Radio Science, held in Sapporo Japan, included a few general lectures given to the whole assembly by invited speakers – the objective being to acquaint an international gathering of specialist radio scientists with the “state of the art” in related radio fields. Craig Rodger was invited…
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Speaking tour – Aurora: The Science and the Splendour
It’s that time of year when aurora are becoming clearer in our skies and fantastic photo opportunities await. From 26 June to 2 July 2023, Tūhura Otago Museum Director Dr Ian Griffin, Craig Rodger and Toni Hoeta travelled around the South Island to deliver a series of talks about where to find aurora and techniques…
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Visit to BGS
In mid-June 2023 Craig Rodger travelled to the UK and visited our Solar Tsunamis research programme team members. He joined them in Edinburgh, hosted by the Geomagnetism Team at the British Geological Survey (BGS). During the visit, he was shown the historical magnetic field measurements of the 1859 Carrington event, stored in their data archive.…
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Third Annual Project Meeting
In late January 2023 the “Year 3” meeting of the Solar Tsunamis research programme was held in Wellington, hosted by our colleagues from GNS Science Te Pū Ao. The meeting was held in the conference facilities in Te Papa, and included visits to GNS (including the National Geohazards Monitoring Centre for New Zealand), and Transpower…
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First Injection Campaign
It can be challenging to measure the real world effects of Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GICs) on the electrical grid, because researchers and engineers have to wait until solar activity causes a significant geomagnetic disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field. Having no control over when these events might happen or how extreme they can be places…
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Daniel Mac Manus hands in PhD thesis
Today (4th Jan) Daniel Mac Manus submitted his PhD thesis – a great way to start 2023! Daniel has been working on his thesis research for a little under 4 years, which has involved some strong collaboration with our industry partners from Transpower New Zealand. The upshot of that was a recent paper in AGU’s Space Weather journal, looking…
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GNS Installs Northlands First 8 LEMI Instruments
In October 2022, Kristin Pratscher, Wiebke Heise and Malcolm Ingham installed the first 8 LEMI instruments in Northland and the remote reference site in the Kaingaroa forest. They also scouted some sites for the next fieldtrip scheduled in mid-November 2022 and found a place to store some equipment in Auckland (a friend of Malcolm Ingham).…
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Chatham Islands Festival of Science
The Chatham Islands Festival of Science brought project members from Dunedin, along with scientists from around New Zealand to the islands in mid August. The outreach team from Tūhura Otago Museum visited schools with help from the scientists as part of a jam-packed week’s worth of science focused activites. The Solar Tsunamis team were busy…
