Matthew Singer

Month: June 2013

  • Aurora

    Aurora

    The Northern Lights

    Once again, the skies lit up with the dancing inferno of the northern lights. The sun has been fairly active the past two months, but this is the first I’ve both been aware of and had a clear sky to see. All of the aurora events I’ve photographed have been special, and each one is different. This one happened to be the strongest storm when the K-index reached 7. It was so bright, I could make out the red band with the naked eye once my vision adjusted to the darkness. The storm peaked here a little after 11:30 pm on Friday, June 28, sending columns of light high into the sky. After watching the display for nearly 40 minutes, I decided we should move to another location where the view of the sky would be a bit more open. Really, I just wanted a change of foreground scenery. We drove south toward the Bethany Chapel where we were at the southern end of a big, flat field. The sky was still glowing, but the streaks were not as bright. The moon had risen above the horizon providing some light on the foreground, but I also wonder if the moonlight was competing with the aurora. By 2:00, with no new major flares occuring, we packed up and headed home to go to bed. It’s a good thing we did, the storm had subsided quite a bit.

    The Northern Lights The Northern Lights

    This is the fourth aurora I’ve been able to photograph since moving to Idaho. Every time, I’m still amazed by the awe and beauty of this spectacle. I hope I never grow tired of enjoying these events. As we were driving to the Bethany Chapel, all I could think about were all the people we were passing who were totally unaware of the events transpiring in the sky outside their own homes.

  • Evolution at Snowbird

    Little Cottonwood Canyon

    This year’s Evolution meeting was held at the Snowbird resort in the beautiful Wasatch Mountains outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. This year, I was fortunate enough to attend this meeting and present a talk on the correlation (or lack thereof) of boldness behaviors and swimming behavior in an open field. Of course, while meetings are great for presenting research from the lab, they’re also great for learning about other research and meeting people and making connections. This was my first trip to the Salt Lake City area, and despite staying at a hotel down in the valley, I really didn’t get a chance to explore the city or any of the surrounding area outside of Little Cottonwood Canyon. Nevertheless, I had a great time and really enjoyed this conference.

    Evolution is generally held on the third weekend of June each year. This year, the meeting began on Friday, June 21 and ran through Tuesday, June 25. Barrie, Matthieu, and I drove down Friday morning, leaving here at 6 am and arriving at Snowbird right around 6 pm, just in time to catch the opening reception. Saturday and Sunday were full of talks, including my own talk on Saturday morning. I was so busy that I didn’t really have time to get out and explore. Luckily, they scheduled a half-day on Monday, giving us the afternoon off just for that purpose. I originally planned to hike from Alta over to Catherine Lake, but the road to the trailhead was closed. So instead, a group of us went up the tram and hiked from Hidden Peak over to Mt. Baldy, a short one-mile hike that descends 300 feet and then rises 400, both summits up around 11,000 feet in elevation. Unfortunately, Monday was the only day we had ovecast skies and rain. We managed to make it back to the tram before the storm really hit the mountain, but some others weren’t so lucky. A few hikers from LSU got stranded on the mountain when the tram closed early and had to hike back down in the storm. By Tuesday, I was fully exhausted, and after sitting through a morning of Quantitative Genetics sessions, I decided to take the afternoon off and ride the tram again to see the views in the sunshine. In fact, it was a great way to unwind before the final banquet. 

    Conferences like these are exhausting. There were probably 2000 people in attendance and too many sessions to choose from. When picking out talks to see, there were often several I wanted to go to that overlapped at the same time. And it’s also easy to overload your schedule, which keeps you constantly on the move. By the second day, I had cut out all talks at the other building so that I wouldn’t have to keep walking back and forth. I also gave myself some breaks throughout the day. But even with this tactic, it’s still easy to become overwhelmed. In some ways, small meetings are nicer because there is only one talk session at a time and everyone is at it. On the other hand, there are lots of great opportunities to meet people and network. I’m exhausted, but I had a great time, and I’m looking forward to next year in Raleigh, North Carolina.