Tag Archives: Space Weather

Radio Waves: Podcast Preservation, Art Bell Plaque, BBC News Cuts, Space Storms, and DK7IH’s Homebrew Transceiver

Radio Waves:  Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio 

Because I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers.  To that end: Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors, Mike Terry, Troy Riedel, and Jeff Murray for the following tips:


Radio Survivor Podcast #230 – The Library of Congress Launches Podcast Preservation Project (Radio Survivor)

On this week’s episode we learn about a brand new project at the Library of Congress that is focused entirely on archiving podcasts. Ted Westervelt, Manager of the Podcast Preservation Project at Library of Congress, joins us to share early details from this new initiative. He explains that the hope is that a wide variety of all types of podcasts will be part of the collection, including the Radio Survivor Podcast.[]

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Memorial Plaque Honoring Art Bell Unveiled at Park in Pahrump, Nevada (Coast to Coast)

Coast to Coast AM founder Art Bell has been honored with a memorial plaque at a park in the Nevada city of Pahrump. The beloved radio personality, who passed away in April of 2018, was a longtime resident of the community and famously broadcast from his home there. The marker, which was unveiled by Nye County on their Facebook page this past Friday and is located at Calvada Eye park, was funded by a group known as the ‘Friends and Fans of Art Bell’ with additional financial support and installation provided by the county.[]


BBC News to close 450 posts as part of £80m savings drive (BBC News)

Around 450 jobs will be cut from BBC News under plans to complete its £80m savings target by 2022.

Outlets to be hit by job closures include BBC Two’s Newsnight, BBC Radio 5 Live and the World Update programme on the World Service.

BBC News boss Fran Unsworth said there had to be a move away from traditional broadcasting and towards digital.

But broadcasting union Bectu said the changes mean staff will be “under even more pressure to deliver”.


How likely are space super-storms? (EarthSky)

A new analysis shows that “severe” space super-storms happened 42 years out of the last 150, and “great” super-storms happened 6 years out of 150. These storms can disrupt modern electronics, aviation and satellite systems and communications.

A new joint study by the University of Warwick and the British Antarctic Survey used historical data to extend scientists’ previous estimates of the likelihood of space super-storms. These storms may originate with solar flares, seen to erupt explosively on the sun during years of high solar activity. Space super-storms aren’t harmful to humans, because our atmosphere protects us, but they can be hugely disruptive to our modern technologies. They can cause power blackouts, take out satellites, disrupt aviation and cause temporary loss of GPS signals and radio communications, scientists say. The new work shows that what the scientists called “severe” space super-storms occurred 42 years out of the last 150 years. What they called “great” super-storms occurred in 6 years out of 150. The new work also sheds light on what’s called the Carrington event of 1859, the largest super-storm in recorded history.[]

Also check out: Are Solar Storms Dangerous To Us?


DK7IH’s New HOMEBREW Transceiver Raises the Bar for All of Us (Soldersmoke Podcast)

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And that, my friends, is a HOMEBREW transceiver. Wow, amazingly well done. After I showed this to Pete N6QW (no slouch in the homebrew packaging department), in frustration with his self-perceived shortcomings he threatened to give up on homebrewing and to throw away all his rigs. Don’t do it Pete!

Peter Rachow, DK7IH has carefully documented his project through as series of blog posts:
Here is Part 1. Part 9 deals with mechanical construction, packaging and what George Dobbs used to call “socketry.”[]


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Lack of Sunspots Breaks a Space Age Record

Another [sun] spotless day on the sun.

Spaceweather.com reports that today we surpassed the largest number of spotless days (270) of the previous 2008 Solar Minimum cycle. The current spotless streak stands at 33 days and is quite possibly on its way to surpass the previous longest streak of this minimum at 36 days.  And you have to go back to 1913 to find a year that had more spotless days (311)!

Above: The blank sun on Dec. 8, 2019. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

The bad news: the Solar Minimum could deepen as many scientists have calculated minimum may not occur until April 2020.  You might be wondering: when is the next Solar Maximum?  That’s forecast to be July 2025.  Both the minimum & maximum forecasts have a +/- 6-month error.

How has the historic Solar Minimum impacted your radio listening?  I know it’s impacted my motivation to set-up my solar telescope for solar observation.

Guest Post by Troy Riedel

“NASA’s solar probe reveals stunning results”

Artist’s Image of Parker Solar Probe via NASA

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Marty, who shares the following article from Popular Science:

NASA’s solar probe reveals stunning results after swooping in close to the sun

Rogue plasma waves and sideways, 100,000-mile-per-hour solar winds abound.

The sky is full of stars, but only one sits within our reach. Even as close as it is, the sun poses plenty of mysteries that can’t be solved from Earth. Odd patterns in sunlight during solar eclipses suggest that the corona, the sun’s outermost bit of atmosphere, inexplicably burns hundreds of times hotter than its surface. And while researchers can catch whiffs of the solar wind—streams of charged particles emanating from the sun—here on Earth, a lot of valuable data washes away by the time it blows by us. Getting measurements from right up next to the sun is a better way to understand our giant, burning ball of gas.

That’s why NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has spent the last year swooping closer and closer to the sun. In its first two passes it encountered new features that may help explain both the corona’s extreme heat and the origins of the solar wind, researchers announced on Wednesday in a series of four publications in Nature. As humanity’s first close encounter with a stellar environment continues, further observations will help researchers better understand how solar weather affects Earth, as well as how all stars age and die.

“We needed to go right to the source,” said Nicola Fox, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division in a press conference on Wednesday.

In November 2018 and April of this year, two of Parker’s orbits brought it closer to the sun than any spacecraft had been before. Diving toward the sun and looping around the back, the probe reached about 15 million miles from the star’s surface—roughly six times closer than the distance between the sun and the Earth. At the shortest parts of its dive, the probe matched the speed of the sun’s rotation, in effect hovering above its surface. “We just sit over it, and let that part of the sun kind of wash over us,” says Kelly Korreck, head of Science Operations for one of Parker’s instrument suites that measures the solar wind.

Up close, the sun’s magnetic field and solar wind are both much more intense compared to what researchers can measure here on Earth, giving Parker an alien environment to explore. Korreck likens the craft’s experiences in the strong magnetic field to those of a diver entering the sea. “It’s kind of like going underwater,” she says. “Things sound different. You get different physics effects.”

Two features in particular came as surprises. The first were what the researchers are calling “rogue waves” in the magnetic field, which Parker registered as spikes in intensity and reversals in direction lasting for seconds to minutes as they rolled over the spacecraft. Dubbed Alfvén waves after Hannes Alfvén, a Swedish plasma physicist who won the 1970 Nobel prize in physics for their description, the phenomenon had been observed from Earth but never with such strength.[…]

Click here to continue reading the full article at Popular Science.

Also, check out this video from NASA:

NOAA Space Weather Enthusiasts Dashboard gets an upgrade

Sun NOAA GOES SUVI

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jake Brodsky (AB3A), who writes:

I am a regular at
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/space-weather-enthusiasts

I just noticed today that the formerly crunchy low resolution x-ray view of the sun has been replaced by the GOES-16 SUVI images on a three hour loop. This has a 195 Angstrom view of the sun in great detail, so you can immediately see where the holes are forming in the corona.

Solar weather enthusiasts don’t need to go to the solar dynamics observatory page all the time to see what the last three hours looked like.

Thanks for the tip, Jake!

Spotless sun about to set record

Above: The blank sun on Dec. 8, 2019. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

(Source: SpaceWeather.com via Michael Bird)

ONE WEEK FROM A SPACE AGE RECORD: 2019 is about to set a Space Age record. So far this year, the sun has been blank (no sunspots) for 261 days, including the last 24 days in a row. If the streak continues for only 7 more days, 2019 will break the Space Age record for spotless suns.

The previous record-holder is the year 2008, when the sun was blank for 268 out of 365 days, making the Solar Minimum of 2008-2009 the deepest of the Space Age. Next weekend, barring a sudden profusion of sunspots, 2019 will move into first place.

Solar Minimum is a normal part of the 11-year sunspot cycle. The past two (2008-2009 and 2018-2019) have been long and deep, making them “century-class” Minima. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days.
What are the side-effects of Solar Minimum? On one hand, solar flares and geomagnetic storms subside, making it harder to catch Northern Lights at mid-latitudes. Space weather grows “quiet.” On the other hand, cosmic rays intensify. The sun’s weakening magnetic field allows more particles from deep space into the solar system, boosting radiation levels in Earth’s atmosphere. Indeed, this is happening right now with cosmic rays nearing a Space Age record.
Stay tuned for updates this week!

www.spaceweather.com

Big Sunspot Produces “Ocean Surf” Sounds on Shortwave

Though sunspots have been rare this year, Sunspot AR2738 has been producing bursts which have been heard as radio static – that sounds like “ocean surf” – on shortwave.

This was posted early this morning at spaceweather.com – along with a recording:

If you have a shortwave radio, you might have heard some unusual sounds this week. Big sunspot AR2738 is producing strong bursts of radio static. “They sound like ocean surf,” says Thomas Ashcraft, who recorded this specimen on April 13th using an amateur radio telescope in New Mexico:

Credit: Observation of Thomas Ashcroft via Spaceweather.com

Please refer to the Spaceweather.com Archive for more info.

Guest Post by Troy Riedel