According to our undergraduate meteorologist, Louis Bowers, this month is currently the 7th coldest July on record since the 1800's. Definitely an interesting month to be experimenting. This Saturday evening, researchers from Rutgers, Scripps, Dalhousie, NRL, CalPoly and UCSB will be conducting a nighttime mission searching for bioluminescent plumes off the coast of New Jersey. The mission, dubbed Operation Black Moon , is scheduled during a new moon, when background light interference will be at a minimum. Current weather reports predict a beautiful evening for the research vessels.
All indicators currently point towards a glowing event.
For the first time on the East Coast, the Rutgers COOL Marine Remote Sensing Lab now is the only institute to capture ocean color data from the Chinese FY1-C Satellite. He has spent the past few weeks preparing the Rutgers satellite system for the new satellite. Crowley, decked out in fascinating colors himself, is now interpreting the data, and eventually plans to post the data on the web. This new data set comes in just in time for Operation Black Moon . If all goes well, the satellite is predicted to pass directly over the research site early Saturday morning.