Broadband Meter-Wavelength Observations of Ionospheric Scintillation
Intensity scintillations of cosmic radio sources are used to study astrophysical plasmas like the ionosphere, the solar wind, and the interstellar medium. Normally these observations are relatively narrow band. With Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) technology at the Kilpisjärvi Atmospheric Imaging Receiv...
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ftdatacite:10.48550/arxiv.1511.00937 2023-05-15T17:03:44+02:00 Broadband Meter-Wavelength Observations of Ionospheric Scintillation Fallows, R. A. Coles, W. A. McKay, D. Vierinen, J. Virtanen, I. I. Postila, M. Ulich, Th. Enell, C-F. Kero, A. Iinatti, T. Lehtinen, M. Orispää, M. Raita, T. Roininen, L. Turunen, E. Brentjens, M. Ebbendorf, N. Gerbers, M. Grit, T. Gruppen, P. Meulman, H. Norden, M. de Reijer, J-P. Schoenmakers, A. Stuurwold, K. 2015 https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1511.00937 https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.00937 unknown arXiv https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2014ja020406 arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ Solar and Stellar Astrophysics astro-ph.SR Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM FOS Physical sciences article-journal Article ScholarlyArticle Text 2015 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1511.00937 https://doi.org/10.1002/2014ja020406 2022-04-01T11:47:40Z Intensity scintillations of cosmic radio sources are used to study astrophysical plasmas like the ionosphere, the solar wind, and the interstellar medium. Normally these observations are relatively narrow band. With Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) technology at the Kilpisjärvi Atmospheric Imaging Receiver Array (KAIRA) station in northern Finland we have observed scintillations over a 3 octave bandwidth. ``Parabolic arcs'', which were discovered in interstellar scintillations of pulsars, can provide precise estimates of the distance and velocity of the scattering plasma. Here we report the first observations of such arcs in the ionosphere and the first broad-band observations of arcs anywhere, raising hopes that study of the phenomenon may similarly improve the analysis of ionospheric scintillations. These observations were made of the strong natural radio source Cygnus-A and covered the entire 30-250\,MHz band of KAIRA. Well-defined parabolic arcs were seen early in the observations, before transit, and disappeared after transit although scintillations continued to be obvious during the entire observation. We show that this can be attributed to the structure of Cygnus-A. Initial results from modeling these scintillation arcs are consistent with simultaneous ionospheric soundings taken with other instruments, and indicate that scattering is most likely to be associated more with the topside ionosphere than the F-region peak altitude. Further modeling and possible extension to interferometric observations, using international LOFAR stations, are discussed. : 11 pages, 17 figures Text Kilpisjärvi Northern Finland DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Kilpisjärvi ENVELOPE(20.767,20.767,69.034,69.034) |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
unknown |
topic |
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics astro-ph.SR Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM FOS Physical sciences |
spellingShingle |
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics astro-ph.SR Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM FOS Physical sciences Fallows, R. A. Coles, W. A. McKay, D. Vierinen, J. Virtanen, I. I. Postila, M. Ulich, Th. Enell, C-F. Kero, A. Iinatti, T. Lehtinen, M. Orispää, M. Raita, T. Roininen, L. Turunen, E. Brentjens, M. Ebbendorf, N. Gerbers, M. Grit, T. Gruppen, P. Meulman, H. Norden, M. de Reijer, J-P. Schoenmakers, A. Stuurwold, K. Broadband Meter-Wavelength Observations of Ionospheric Scintillation |
topic_facet |
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics astro-ph.SR Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM FOS Physical sciences |
description |
Intensity scintillations of cosmic radio sources are used to study astrophysical plasmas like the ionosphere, the solar wind, and the interstellar medium. Normally these observations are relatively narrow band. With Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) technology at the Kilpisjärvi Atmospheric Imaging Receiver Array (KAIRA) station in northern Finland we have observed scintillations over a 3 octave bandwidth. ``Parabolic arcs'', which were discovered in interstellar scintillations of pulsars, can provide precise estimates of the distance and velocity of the scattering plasma. Here we report the first observations of such arcs in the ionosphere and the first broad-band observations of arcs anywhere, raising hopes that study of the phenomenon may similarly improve the analysis of ionospheric scintillations. These observations were made of the strong natural radio source Cygnus-A and covered the entire 30-250\,MHz band of KAIRA. Well-defined parabolic arcs were seen early in the observations, before transit, and disappeared after transit although scintillations continued to be obvious during the entire observation. We show that this can be attributed to the structure of Cygnus-A. Initial results from modeling these scintillation arcs are consistent with simultaneous ionospheric soundings taken with other instruments, and indicate that scattering is most likely to be associated more with the topside ionosphere than the F-region peak altitude. Further modeling and possible extension to interferometric observations, using international LOFAR stations, are discussed. : 11 pages, 17 figures |
format |
Text |
author |
Fallows, R. A. Coles, W. A. McKay, D. Vierinen, J. Virtanen, I. I. Postila, M. Ulich, Th. Enell, C-F. Kero, A. Iinatti, T. Lehtinen, M. Orispää, M. Raita, T. Roininen, L. Turunen, E. Brentjens, M. Ebbendorf, N. Gerbers, M. Grit, T. Gruppen, P. Meulman, H. Norden, M. de Reijer, J-P. Schoenmakers, A. Stuurwold, K. |
author_facet |
Fallows, R. A. Coles, W. A. McKay, D. Vierinen, J. Virtanen, I. I. Postila, M. Ulich, Th. Enell, C-F. Kero, A. Iinatti, T. Lehtinen, M. Orispää, M. Raita, T. Roininen, L. Turunen, E. Brentjens, M. Ebbendorf, N. Gerbers, M. Grit, T. Gruppen, P. Meulman, H. Norden, M. de Reijer, J-P. Schoenmakers, A. Stuurwold, K. |
author_sort |
Fallows, R. A. |
title |
Broadband Meter-Wavelength Observations of Ionospheric Scintillation |
title_short |
Broadband Meter-Wavelength Observations of Ionospheric Scintillation |
title_full |
Broadband Meter-Wavelength Observations of Ionospheric Scintillation |
title_fullStr |
Broadband Meter-Wavelength Observations of Ionospheric Scintillation |
title_full_unstemmed |
Broadband Meter-Wavelength Observations of Ionospheric Scintillation |
title_sort |
broadband meter-wavelength observations of ionospheric scintillation |
publisher |
arXiv |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1511.00937 https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.00937 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(20.767,20.767,69.034,69.034) |
geographic |
Kilpisjärvi |
geographic_facet |
Kilpisjärvi |
genre |
Kilpisjärvi Northern Finland |
genre_facet |
Kilpisjärvi Northern Finland |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2014ja020406 |
op_rights |
arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1511.00937 https://doi.org/10.1002/2014ja020406 |
_version_ |
1766057650235113472 |