| INTRO:
PLASMA |
MAGNETISM |
SOLAR WIND |
CORONAL MASS
EJECTIONS (CMEs) |
SOLAR
FLARES |
DYSTOPIA |
MAGNETOSPHERE |
INTERACTION |
ATMOSPHERE |
COLORS |
DETECTION |
BIBLIOGRAPHY |
AURORAL DETECTION AT UAF
| MAGNETOMETERS
(six around the state) |
Poker Flat RADAR |
Poker Flat OPTICAL Meridian Spectrograph 15-hour, four-emission keogram |
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| Alaska Science Forum https://media.asf.alaska.edu/uploads/Magnetometer/magnetometer_2.jpg |
Advanced
Modular Incoherent Scatter Radar http://amisr.com/amisr/media/filer_public_thumbnails/filer_public/2013/02/19/aimg_9335_1.jpg__1000x568_q85.png |
Geophysical Institute http://optics.gi.alaska.edu/realtime/data/PKR_DMSP/Keo_15hr/Keo_15hr/PKR_Keo_15hr_2015-04-20.png |
Dr. Don Hampton detects and records the aurora three
ways: magnetometers, radar, and optically, as shown
above. He is a Research Assistant Professor
with the Geophysical Institute and is looking at auroral pulses which cause
irregularities in the plasma—measuring drift speed, density,
and temperature of the ionosphere.
MAGNETOMETERS
The
magnetometer plots are at: http://magnet.gi.alaska.edu
which takes you to https://www.asf.alaska.edu/magnetometer/
He showed me a few
of his spare Flux Gate magnetometers These
things are kind of built like a large golf tee
with the magnetic field sensors like a puck atop a
large spike.
The difficult part, precisely winding the
fine copper wires into three flawless coils, one
per axis, and the internal machining, is all done
by hand. He
estimates that each one costs around
$20,000-$30,000 to make. He described how
one went down and when they got back to it, they
could tell that a polar bear had ripped into the
box to investigate. The core coils survived
just fine. His magnetospheres detect down to 1 nanotesla at 1
Hz!
Dr. Hampton is
monitoring six active magnetospheres around the
state. There is one called "Cigo" in a
building near the Geophysical Building and five
others at Poker Flat,
Kaktovik, Toolik Lake, Eagle, and Trapper
Creek. Fort
Yukon and Gakona (former HAARP site) are currently
inactive. Each setup has a solar panel and
battery setup to transmit its data and his data is
available live at the link below. The
website defaults to showing just the Poker Flat
magnetometer, but you can turn on the live plots
for all six. He told me that the
USGS only has three magnetometers in the state: one at
UAF, another in Barrow, and another on the
Alaska-Canada border.
Personal photo
Google Map
The external housing is made of
aluminum. The wires carry its data to be uploaded
with power from a separate solar panel. He talked about how he nulled out x
amount of the signal received in each of the three
directions as “normal”
Inside the external housing, the
ceramic frame keeps the heart of the magnetosphere
in a taut array. These coils enable them to
collect data on magnetic fields in any
direction. When he sets up a magnetometer, he
has to be careful to get it perfectly level and
oriented correctly using the edge notches.
Personal photo
Personal photo
The coils are oriented along each axis in a 3D
coordinate plane. If we take this set to be
the XZ plane....
the center coil would be the XY plane
and this other set would be the YZ
plane. He
nulls out a certain amount of signal received in
each of the three directions as "normal."
Personal photo
Personal photo
Personal photo
I was surprised and excited to see on the AMISR schedule that NASA uses this array to monitor their Themis mission and that NASA uses Poker Flat for sounding rockets. I found a beautiful video of the most recent auroral research launches on January 26, 2015 (including one NASA rocket) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spcibOOLqEE.
Hampton's camera data can be
found at: http://optics.gi.alaska.edu/optics/.
For general viewing, the best one is on the Real-time data page
called Poker Flat Digital All-sky - RBG combined or its
archives, but I believe they use the keograms more for real
research.