Wednesday 19 September
Having left the ice camp in a hurry to avoid adverse weather, we arrive in the marginal ice zone in the middle of night. We will now lie still here for two days completing some of the measurements and also starting to secure equipment for the open ocean voyage south.
This morning we saw the Crown Prince Haakon on the horizon, the new Norwegian research vessel presumably heading north into the ice.
While coming down south in variable ice conditions, yesterday we also had our first sun set in a while; the sun is not very far below the horizon and it doesn’t become very dark outside. As the sun closes in on the horizon and its rays is intercepted and refracted by ice crystals in the air, some spectacularly beautiful phenomena sometimes appear.
Report from Michael Tjernström.