On February 22nd, the Nanook’s Women's Basketball team competed against Montana State Billings (MSUB) in an exciting matchup. Prior to the game, a heartfelt ceremony was held to honor the team’s graduating seniors.

Near Nome, Alaska, in the vast arctic landscape of Game Management Area 22, a SuperCub airplane traces the sky. In one of the two seats is Sara Henslee, a UAF Masters student in Wildlife Biology & Conservation. Below her, she sees caribou, ambling bears and of course, her research subject—the wild moose living in the Northwestern part of our state.

On Halloween night, 2003, a young boy named Vincent Ledvina is walking home after a cold midwestern evening of trick-or-treating. He looks up and sees something bright and green shimmering across the sky. “Is that the aurora?” he asks his parents. They aren’t sure. But young Ledvina, having seen the wonders of the upper atmosphere with his own eyes for the first time, is hooked.

Now a second-year Ph.D. student in Space Physics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Ledvina studies the aurora borealis. He is working to understand the intricacies of these beautiful—and even life-changing—natural phenomena using both NASA and citizen-sourced data.