Category Archives: Space Weather

A free book (PDF) on sun-earth interaction

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Eric (WD8RIF), who writes:

This came in the most recent ARRL Contest newsletter:

The Sun, The Earth, and Near-Earth Space: A Guide to the Sun-Earth System by J. A. Eddy is a readable and accessible textbook that explains the dynamics of the Sun and its interaction with the Earth’s ionosphere. It’s available as a free download, courtesy of NASA and the International Living with a Star Program. Anyone using the ionosphere as a medium for radio wave transmission and wants to better understand propagation should find this book of interest. (Ward, N0AX)

Thank you for the stellar tip, Eric!

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Radio propagation may improve soon with region of solar flux

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike Hansgen, who shares this latest Space Weather report from Tamitha Skov:

Space Weather jumps into action this week with two weak solar storms en route to Earth. NASA models predict they will hit starting July 9 and they could easily bring aurora to high latitudes, if not mid-latitudes. Amateur radio operators are also in for some fun as a new region rotates into view and brings with it a boost in solar flux, which will help radio propagation just in time for hurricane season. GPS users shouldn’t be affected by the low-level flaring of this region on Earth’s day side, but should stay vigilant near aurora and near the dawn-dusk terminators for glitches in their reception. Low-latitude GPS/GNSS reception might even improve under the influence of these weak solar storms. See details of the coming storms, when this new active region will be in view, catch up on aurora photos, and see what else is in store!

Click here to view on YouTube.

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Skov notes possible role of amateur radio tech with Mars OTH communications

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(Source: Southgate ARC)

Over-the-horizon communication on Mars

ARRL highlights a post by The Space Weather Woman, Dr. Tamitha Skov, that notes the role amateur radio technology could play in over-the-horizon radio communications on Mars

I am still smiling at the huge response I got to a post I put up on Twitter this week. A newbie to our Space Weather community dared to talk about Amateur Radio as if it were an outdated hobby– whoops, bad idea. I gently educated him.
In doing so, I roused many radio amateurs and emergency communicators, who added their own comments and talked about their own personal experiences in the field. It was very gratifying.

What I hadn’t expected, however, was the strong interest in the concept that amateur radio will be critical to establishing over-the-horizon radio communications on planets like Mars in the near future.

This idea brings me back to how we managed to communicate over long distances many decades before we had satellites, internet or cellular networks. In terms of wireless communications on Earth, we were very much in the same place back in the early 1900s that we find ourselves in now when we think about colonizing Mars.
Yet few people realize that despite all our advanced technology, we can’t bring a cell phone to Mars. We will need to fall back on our ‘old ways’ of doing things when it comes to communicating on other planets. Isn’t it funny how ‘old’ things become ‘new’ again?

Source ARRL
http://www.arrl.org/news/the-k7ra-solar-update-527

Space Weather Woman
http://www.spaceweatherwoman.com/
https://twitter.com/TamithaSkov

Dr. Tamitha Skov’s latest video report:

Click here to view on YouTube.

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Sunspots are in short supply (and it’s only getting worse)

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Not a sunspot to be found. (Credit: SDO/HMI via Spaceweather.com)

Unfortunately, this is not news to brighten your day. According to Spaceweather.com, sunspots are disappearing faster than expected:

Sunspots are becoming scarce. Very scarce. So far in 2018 the sun has been blank almost 60% of the time, with whole weeks going by without sunspots. Today’s sun, shown here in an image [above] from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, is typical of the featureless solar disk.

The fact that sunspots are vanishing comes as no surprise. Forecasters have been saying for years that this would happen as the current solar cycle (“solar cycle 24”) comes to an end. The surprise is how fast.

“Solar cycle 24 is declining more quickly than forecast,” stated NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center on April 26th. This plot shows observed sunspot numbers in blue vs. the official forecast in red:

“The smoothed, predicted sunspot number for April-May 2018 is about 15,” says NOAA. “However, the actual monthly values have been lower.”

Continue reading the full story at Spaceweather.com.

I will be very happy to see sunspot numbers rise again–they eventually will, of course. I’ve almost forgotten what a proper band opening feels like.

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A second magnetic field discovered

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(Source: Southgate ARC)

The ESA just discovered a second magnetic field surrounding our planet

A trio of satellites studying our planet’s magnetic field have shown details of the steady swell of a magnetic field produced by the ocean’s tides.

Four years of data collected by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Swarm mission have contributed to the mapping of this ‘other’ magnetic field, one that could help us build better models around global warming.

Physicist Nils Olsen from the Technical University of Denmark presented the surprising results at this year’s European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, explaining how his team of researchers managed to detail such a faint signature.

“It’s a really tiny magnetic field,” Olsen told BBC correspondent Jonathan Amos. “It’s about 2 – 2.5 nanotesla at satellite altitude, which is about 20,000 times weaker than Earth’s global magnetic field.”

On a fundamental level, both fields are the result of a dynamo effect produced by charged particles being sloshed around in a fluid.

The stronger magnetic field that tugs on our compass needle forms from the steady movement of molten rock deep under our feet.

This field also leaves its signature in the alignment of particles embedded in Earth’s crust, a pattern that has also been analysed in detail by Swarm

Read the full story at:
https://www.sciencealert.com/esa-swarm-satellite-map-ocean-tides-magnetic-field

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