GeoLog

Regular Features

Imaggeo on Mondays: Surface spirals

This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is no ordinary image; it’s a snapshot of surface ocean speeds and the extent of ice cover in the North Atlantic. It was produced using a high resolution model of ocean eddies – high resolution here means that details are simplified into grids 3 km across, or one 20th of a degree. Three kilometres may sound like a pretty large area, but in oceanographic modelling, thi ...[Read More]

Geosciences Column: Stitching the seafloor together

You’re standing on a mountain peak, with a fabulous field site before you. Wanting to capture the moment, you take out your iPhone, snap a dozen pictures and your mobile stitches them together beautifully – a nice record to show your colleagues back in the office. Unfortunately, not all field sites are so easy to capture – especially when you need to do a little science with the images. Seafloor p ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Capturing the aurora

The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are created as charged particles interact with the Earth’s atmosphere.  These electrons are part of the solar wind and as they pass through the Earth’s magnetic shield (the magnetosphere); the charged particles collide with those in our atmosphere, emitting light. In the southern hemisphere this phenomenon is known as the aurora australis, but both are caus ...[Read More]