Winter Field School at the University of Alaska a Big Success!

Winter Field School at the University of Alaska a Big Success!

The first Winter Field School (WFS) held January 4-11, 2025 at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, was a big success! This event was organized by the NASA funded Eclipse Ambassadors program and was in partnership with Aurorasaurus, a joint NASA Education and New Mexico Consortium (NMC) program. The Winter Field School was made possible by supplement to the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s NASA SciAct Eclipse Ambassadors program (PI: Vivian White). The goal of the program was to expose junior and senior STEM majors to heliophysics to pursue either in graduate school or as a career.

Attending college students traveled to Alaska to engage in a week of classes in heliophysics and related phenomena, held at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. They participated in hands-on projects, and citizen science and were introduced to space physics graduate studies in topics such as electromagnetism, observations of aurora, data reduction, and instrumentation.

Attending from Aurorasaurus were NMC scientists, Matt Heavner and Feras Natsheh, and NASA scientist Liz MacDonald. They took part as leaders in the WFS with their program “Eclipses to Aurora”. In addition to Matt’s lecture “Ionosphere, Thermosphere, Mesosphere,” Liz and Matt discussed career paths in Space Science. The school included field trips to Poker Flat Research Range and the Large Animal Research Station, lectures on indigenous star knowledge, solar physics, cultural connections, and aurora on other planets. Students also were given a tour of the University of Alaska Fairbanks cubesat engineering lab at the Geophysical Institute. Laura Brandt, also from the NMC, provided remote and logistical support.

The Winter Field School was a great success – all participants were able to see the aurora, many for the first time.

To learn more see: https://astrosociety.org/education-outreach/amateur-astronomers/eclipse-ambassadors/winter-field-school.html

Group photo from first night of aurora chasing –  taken by Maia Hartwigsen