Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Holed up in a cabin in the small northern Alaskan village of Venetie — which, according to the 2020 census, had a population of just 125 — University of Iowa doctoral candidate Riley Troyer is on a NASA-funded mission to sky gaze.
His duties, actually, are much more specific and scientific, as he’s among a trio of University of Iowa investigators who over the weekend flew to Alaska on a three-week mission to better understand a rarely viewed type of aurora — also known as Northern Lights — that flashes or “pulsates.”