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Well, I'm
writing this at the end of Semester 4, so it may not be complete. My
third semester found me taking classes for what I've sworn will be the last
time (although I'm sure I'll eat those words). I took College
Teaching, Volcanic Clouds and Remote Sensing of the Earth. They were
all very good classes, but I found myself frustrated that I wasn't able to
completely devote myself to my research. Research had become very
exciting. We had decided to build a new piece of equipment that had
recently been developed at Montseratt Volcano
Observatory (MVO). It is a new uv
spectrometer based on differential absorption spectroscopy and it's
amazing. The best way to understand its postive
attributes is to make a comparison with the current technology, the
Correlation Spectrometer (COSPEC). The COSPEC costs about $60,000 and
is very, very large, requiring several people to haul it into the
field. It is powered by a car battery, which also needs to be
carried. Measurements can be taken at a much quicker rate and therefore,
the temporal resolution has improved. The mini-DOAS, as we were
originally labeling it, costs around $6,000 for a complete mobile setup and
can be contained in a case about 11" x 10" x 7". It
includes the spectrometer (the size of a deck of cards), a fiber optic
cable, and a telescope which focuses the light onto the cable (which is
plugged into the spectrometer). The entire setup is powered by a
mini-laptop computer via a USB port on the spectrometer. The
mini-laptop also records the data. It has been really interesting to
be involved in the development of such cutting-edge technology. To
top it all off, I was the first to get the opportunity to take it into the
field. It traveled with me to Stromboli
Volcano, where I met up with several other volcanologists,
including: Andy Harris, Glyn Williams-Jones,
Bruce Houghton (all of Hawaii); Maurizio Ripepe
(University of Florence); and many students. I found the very first
field-testing of a peice of equipment a little
frustrating at first. I ran into many problems, of course. At
this time, I was attempting to use gel-cell batteries with a power
inverter, both of which often gave me problems. The toughest part was
being there on my own - no one else there knew anything about this equipment.
I was the "epert" (ha ha). That was pretty scary, but I spent as much
time as I could gathering data and keeping track
of any problems and solutions (when they were found). It turned out
to be a very useful excursion. I came back full of ideas for how to
improve our equipment. Most importantly, was acquiring a mini-laptop
that could serve as power source in order to eliminate the need for
batteries and power inverters. This would turn out to be my goal for
the next several months. Classes took up a great deal of my time and
I ended up getting no time at all to look at my data - it got set
aside. And by the end of the semester, I was already planning my next
field trip to Guatemala in January. So, without any idea of what I
had really recorded in Italy, I prepared to head back into the field - this
time for an entire month of data gathering.
Other exciting news from this semester is that I have been awarded a $5,000
Michigan Space Grant!
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