Hercules A

Hercules A
Radio-Optical View of the Galaxy Hercules A - Many thanks to: NASA, ESA, S. Baum and C. O'Dea (RIT), R. Perley and W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Monday, February 25, 2013

JUICE mission to Jupiter


The Juno Jovian Observatory:
http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/search/label/Juno
will fly by the Earth September 10 this year, to gain energy and continue its journey to Jupiter, arriving in 2016.

I look forward to this wonderful mission !

There is more to come:

"...NASA has selected key contributions to a 2022 European Space Agency (ESA) mission that will study Jupiter and three of its largest moons in unprecedented detail. The moons are thought to harbor vast water oceans beneath their icy surfaces... Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will be the U.S. lead for the Radar for Icy Moon Exploration experiment. The radar experiment's principal investigator is Lorenzo Bruzzone of Universita degli Studi di Trento in Italy.

Under the lead of Bruzzone and the Italian Space Agency, JPL will provide the transmitter and receiver hardware for a radar sounder designed to penetrate the icy crust of Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto to a depth of about 5 miles (9 kilometers). This will allow scientists to see for the first time the underground structure of these tectonically complex and unique icy worlds..."
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-069

Sunday, February 24, 2013

130216 0800-2300 UTC -- Jovian HOM minor arcs - 1 to 5 MHz band at STEREO WAVES A and B

Please see Imai Imai Higgins Thieman 2011:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011JGRA..11612233I
and my post:
http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/2013/02/voyager-and-cassini-observations-of.html

Jovian HOM was first studied by Desch and Carr 1974, using the RAE-1 satellite, and Brown 1974, using IMP-6 data.

Many thanks to the STEREO WAVES Team.



Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The United States of America Air Force Solar Observatories

The Observatories are operated by the United States Air Force Weather Agency (183 million annual budget).
http://www.afweather.af.mil/units/airforceweatheragency/

Solar Radio Flux data Lists:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/lists/radio/README








Friday, February 15, 2013

2012 DA14 asteroid flyby, 2013 February 15


The asteroid was discovered on February 23, 2012, by the Observatorio Astronomico de La Sagra Sky Survey, from Andalucia in southern Spain:

http://www.lasagraskysurvey.org/

The Goldstone California 70 meter NASA antenna is expected to produce a radar 3 dimensional movie mapping the asteroid from all sides.

The Jansky 27 antenna Very Large Array in New Mexico, and the Arecibo 1000 foot radio telescope will also participate in the radar observations.









Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Faraday rotation effects in spectral records of Jupiter's decametric radiation



I refer to Riihimaa 1967:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1967Obs....87...24R

and post a copy of Equation 1.

The number of Faraday rotations is inversely proportional to the square of the frequency.

Therefore, the number of rotations at a frequency f1 is:

Number of Faraday rotations = f1^2/(f2^2-f1^2)
where f2 is the frequency of an adjacent band , f2>f1

If the Faraday modulation bands are centered at 20 and 20.3 MHz, the number of rotations is 33.1

If the angle between the magnetic field direction and the line of sight is close to 90 degrees, the number of rotations will be close to 0 and the Faraday modulations observed with a linearly polarized antenna may disappear.

Dr. Eng. Victor Herrero-Arrieta Ph.D. M.S. Ing.Ind.
http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/view/sidebar
https://groups.google.com/d/forum/victor-herrero-radio-astronomy
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=es&fromgroups#!forum/red-radioastronomia-en-espanol

Monday, February 11, 2013

121113 - Interesting Io-B arcs with very prominent modulations in left circular polarization, and Riihimaa modulations in right circular polarization



Fig. 2 from Cecconi et al. 2012





Many thanks to the Nancay Decametric Array Team at the Nancay Radio Astronomy Station of Paris Observatory, and Prof. Dr. Kazumasa Imai, Kochi National College of Technology, Kochi Japan.

Dr. Eng. Victor Herrero-Arrieta Ph.D. M.S. Ing.Ind.
http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/view/sidebar
https://groups.google.com/d/forum/victor-herrero-radio-astronomy
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=es&fromgroups#!forum/red-radioastronomia-en-espanol

Modulation structures in the dynamic spectra of Jovian radio emission obtained with high time-frequency resolution



I refer to Litvinenko Lecacheux Rucker Konovalenko Ryabov Taubenschuss Vinogradov Shaposhnikov 2009:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009A%26A...493..651L
Free pdf available.

I quote some portions of much interest to me:

Abstract:
"Aims: The wide-band dynamic spectra of Jovian decameter emission obtained over the last decade with high-frequency and high time resolution equipment on the largest decameter band antenna array, the Ukrainian T-shape Radio telescope (UTR-2), are presented.
Methods: We analyzed the data obtained with the Digital SpectroPolarimiter (DSP) and WaveForm Reciever (WFR) installed at UTR-2. The combination of the large antenna and high performance equipment gives the best sensitivity and widest band of analysis, dynamic range, time and frequency resolutions. The wavelet transform method and the Fourier technique was used for further data processing.
Results: The main characteristics of already known and newly detected modulation events were investigated and specified. The new receiving-recording facilities, methodology and program of observations are described in detail."

Why do we study Jovian radiation ? :

"Currently, despite continuing interest in the investigation of this phenomenon with ground-based methods (see, for instance, Nigl et al. 2007; Hess et al. 2007b; Taubenschuss et al. 2006) as well as by space missions (see, for instance Hospodarsky et al. 2004; Spilker et al. 2007; Mutel et al. 2007) there is no complete theory able to explain the origin of the radiation and the particularities appearing in the dynamic spectra of DAM (decameter) emission(Hess et al. 2007a; Zarka et al. 2007;Shaposhnikov et al. 2008)."

"...more investigations using the newer, more sensitive instruments are also very important. Discovering more weak events and the less contrasting fine time-frequency structures may provide new information about the nature and physical mechanism of the Jovian radio emission in general."

"One of the most interesting particularities of S-bursts is their rapid drift in the frequency time plane, which has no reliable explanation (see Ryabov & Gerasimova 1990, and reference therein)."

"Genova et al. (1981) found a new class of modulations, called “high frequency lanes”, which appear in the high frequency part of the dynamic spectrum. Moreover, these authors, based on the analysis of much experimental data, suggested that modulation events are either produced by the Earth’s ionosphere or by the oscillations in interplanetary medium."

Faraday modulations and Io plasma torus:

"...Therefore the observations of Faraday fringes can be used to remotely sense the electron content of the medium traversed by the wave. Moreover, this effect gives us the possibility of monitoring the latitudinal inhomogeneity of the Io plasma torus (Shaposhnikov et al. 1999)...is not yet clear what the percentage ratio is of each medium’s (Io’s plasma torus and the Earth’s ionosphere) contribution to the full Faraday rotation"

I enclose a copy of Fig. 6 showing "high frequency lanes", and Fig. 12 showing Z-envelope and superfine structure of Short bursts.

Dr. Eng. Victor Herrero-Arrieta Ph.D. M.S. Ing.Ind.
http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/view/sidebar
https://groups.google.com/d/forum/victor-herrero-radio-astronomy
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=es&fromgroups#!forum/red-radioastronomia-en-espanol


Saturday, February 9, 2013

Jupiter imaging with LOFAR below 200 MHz, in November 2011, for one full rotation

I refer to Girard Zarka Tasse Hess 2012:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012sf2a.conf..681G 

I copy below Figures 1 and 2.

Abstract:
"Since its detection in the mid-fifties, the synchrotron radiation, emitted by the Jupiter radiation belts at decimeter wavelengths (``DIM''), has been extensively observed over a wide spectrum (from >300 MHz to 22 GHz) by various instruments (VLA, ATCA, WSRT). They provided accurate flux measurements and resolved images of the emission that reveal spatial, temporal and spectral variabilities. However, no instrument was able to image the radiations belts below 100 MHz (at meter and decametre wavelength). The LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) (van Haarlem et al. 2012), which is a phased-array interferometer operating in the [30-80] & [110-250] MHz bandwidth, observed for the first time the Jupiter synchrotron emission. The antenna distribution provided baselines from 70 m up to ˜20 km that resolved the emission at low frequencies (127-172 MHz) during its commissioning phase. In November 2011, a single 10-hour track enabled to cover an entire planetary rotation in a bandwidth of 24 MHz. We present here the specific methods and steps implemented to reduce and to image the planetary data at low frequencies. At this stage of the commissioning, the smoothness of the synchrotron spectrum enabled the direct comparison between the expected flux density and the measurements from VLA data obtained in 1994 and 1998 (Kloosterman et al. 2008). We measured a total flux density of 3.5-4± [0.1-0.3] Jy, slightly lower to what was obtained from VLA observations and models (˜ 5-6 Jy). Future joint observations that cover the whole spectrum of the emission will enable the tracking of its temporal short- and long-term variability. The study of this variability brings information about the source, loss and transport processes taking place in the inner Jovian magnetosphere, improving in the same time the existing radiative code and magnetospheric models."




Monday, February 4, 2013

Many Solar bursts and a C2.0 flare on 130204

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/victor-herrero-radio-astronomy/tilSPWiUXrA 

The 1457 UTC burst had a relatively slow negative drift rate, compared to the garden variety type III. It appears to be a composite of 6 slow type III spaced about 10 seconds apart.

We had a C2.0 flare peaking at 1459 UTC, very likely the cause of this interesting burst package.

Many thanks to the Nancay Decametric Array Team at the Nancay Radio Astronomy Station of Paris Observatory, Solar Dynamics Observatory, and Lockheed Martin Teams.


Friday, February 1, 2013

An Energetic Ray Global Observatory pixel in Brazil - by Tulio Barrs

Many type III bursts on 130131

The dynamic range is about 25 dB from violet to red.

Many thanks to the Nancay Decametric Array Team at the Nancay Radio Astronomy Station of Paris Observatory.