STATUS: Today was very different than yesterday. The solar wind was considerably weaker and the aurora responded (or not) appropriately. Although we did see some fairly bright arcs early in the day (brighter than expected, at times) it tended to be intermittent and, ultimately, too far to the north for us to be able to hit with the rocket. As we rotated closer to magnetic noon we did see an increase in red aurora (soft electron precipitation), though it tended to drift even further north as time went on.

The good news is that we were "in" for winds, after having to deal with some strong gusts early in the day. We also had snowfall early at Longyearbyen, but only patches of clouds in Ny Ålesund and so we were able to monitor the skies from there (thanks to the Ny Ålesund crew!). Everything on the payload seems to be operating well these days, with daily checks becoming routine (hhmmm .... more routine than we had hoped for).

STATUS: The space weather forecast from NOAA tells us: quiet to unsettled on 10 December, and quiet to unsettled with the chance for active conditions on 11 December. Activity is forecast due to recurrent coronal hole effects anticipated to begin late on 10 December. Obviously, we are always optimistic, but the images of the sun are currently the best we have seen so far. The coronal hole mentioned by NOAA is the dark region in the images.

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