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)

Friday, November 5, 2010

Goddard Space Flight Center Delivers Magnetometers for Juno Mission


Goddard has delivered two vector magnetometers to Lockheed Martin in Denver Colorado:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-352

Each magnetometer has two non-magnetic star cameras to measure precise orientation.

Launch is scheduled for August 2011, with arrival in 2016.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Great Io-B storm on October 28, 2010


I observed Io-B with Wes Greenman's Polarimeter data stream and chatted with Tom Ashcraft observing in New Mexico. We had a good time enjoying this wonderful Io-B.

My thanks to Wes.
His Radio Observatory is located in northern Florida

Io-B is "generally" Right Hand Polarized, and this one "generally" lived to its reputation.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Solar event on 100807 near 18 to 21 UT




An M1 flare produced strong type III, II, and IV radio bursts, for a period of 3 hours.

Please see:
http://herrero.freei.me/events1008/

Monday, July 26, 2010

Eight type III bursts at 16 MHz, on 100725


I refer to the STEREO WAVES spectrum:
http://swaves.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/s-waves-ds/2010/swaves_summary_20100725_c.png

The SWAVES beacon spectrum shows continued activity today 100726:
http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/beacon/beacon_swaves.gif

I show an SDO view of active region 11089, from a 171 angstrom image taken 100726 at 1357 UT.

Victor
http://www.freelists.org/archive/radioastro
http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/
http://herrero.freei.me/

Sunday, July 25, 2010

A study of 88 type III bursts, using STEREO WAVES data

Vidojevic and Maksimovic 2009:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009POBeo..86..287V
have analyzed 88 type III bursts, using STEREO WAVES data in the 125 kHz to 16 MHz band, from November 2006 to September 2007.

Type III bursts are caused by electron beams streaming away from the Sun along magnetic field lines, at near relativistic speeds. The 16 MHz radiation originates from roughly 1 solar radius above the photosphere. The 20 kHz radiation originates at roughly 1 Astronomical Unit from the Sun.

One of their conclusions is that the electron beam speed is almost constant with distance from the Sun.

They find an expression for the frequency drift rate, noting that the maximum flux density (watt per meter^2 per hertz) occurs near 0.8 MHz, a result that needs to be explained.

Calibration is performed using the Galactic background signal:
Dulk et al. 2001: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001A%26A...365..294D

Victor
http://www.freelists.org/archive/radioastro
http://herrero.freei.me/
http://herrero-radio-astronomy.blogspot.com/

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Juno Armored Up to Go to Jupiter




Here is an outreach article about the Juno Mission to Jupiter, launching next year.

See also this blog

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Active Region 11084 on 100629

There is a single sun spot underneath the fan shaped high temperature ultra violet radiation:

SDO AIA 171 angstrom image


Visible


I hope we get some STRONG ! radio bursts from this region.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands inaugurates LOFAR

Her Majesty, together with a group of school children, pushed a button and produced the first official scientific results with this "super radio telescope", last Saturday June 12:

http://confrontaal.org/wordpress/?p=5989

The optical fiber connections used by LOFAR will also be used to provide fast web access to 60 regional schools.

Solar observations are a key LOFAR project, and I am looking for good movies of a nice Solar burst, at several frequencies, as soon as possible, please.

In July of 2008 I prepared this page with LOFAR pictures:
http://herrero.freei.me/lofar/

Monday, May 10, 2010

Strong type III radio burst and flare May 8 2010

The WAVES radio telescope of the STEREO Ahead Observatory, located about 1 Astronomical Unit ahead of the Earth, recorded a strong type III radio burst near 2010 UT. It was in a good position to record this event, which was probably generated by active region 11069, near the Solar west limb.

STEREO Behind also observed it, with weaker intensity.
Type III radiation is directional.

Click images to enlarge



The two details above are enlarged from the daily summary spectrum.
The white line is at a frequency of 16 MHz.
The upper edge is near 30 kHz.
The black time ticks are at 20 and 21 UT.


Active region 11069 also produced an X-ray class C2.4 flare, starting near 2004 UT, a few minutes before the radio burst.

My thanks to the STEREO, GOES, and SOHO Observatory Teams.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Four Nancay Jovian events near Solar conjunction

Details extracted from the Decametric Array quicklooks
10 to 40 MHz
My thanks to Paris Observatory

Probability maps coded by Junpei Azuma, Imai Laboratory, Kochi National College of Technology, Japan



Io-B 100128
About 23 degrees from the Sun, before conjunction




Io-C 100203
About 19 degrees from the Sun, before conjunction



Non-Io-A 100329
About 23 degrees from the Sun, after conjunction




Io-B 100402
About 26 degrees from the Sun, after conjunction
With ionospheric modulations in LHP


Sunday, April 25, 2010

Non-Io-B 050313 high resolution spectra from the UTR-2 array

Ryabov V. B. et al. 2010 provides an example of high resolution S burst spectra obtained with the 2040 dipole UTR-2 array (Ukrainian T-shape Radiotelescope Mark 2)


Map coded by Junpei Azuma, Imai Laboratory, Kochi National College of Technology, Japan


Click to enlarge


Click to enlarge


Detail A center
The resolution is 4 kHz 250 us

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Juno assembly started April 2010

Lockheed Martin started to assemble Juno April 1, in Denver Colorado.
Launch August 2011, arrival to Jupiter July 2016.

Radiation protection vault for the electronics being lifted on top of the propulsion system.

Propulsion system


Illustrations of Juno orbits relative to the Jovian magnetosphere and the radiation belts.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Long Wavelength Array progress April 2010

The ribbon cutting ceremony for the first Long Wavelength Array Station was held on April 1 2010, near the center of the Very Large Array in New Mexico. The LWA radio telescope will operate in the 10 to 88 MHz band, with many stations located in the State of New Mexico.

LWA-1 station array


Visitors next to one of the "Tied-Fork" dipole pairs.

This is the LWA page at the University of New Mexico.

Monday, March 29, 2010

The great Solar type III radio storm of November 11-17 2006

Radio JOVE Participant Dusty Samouce, who lives in the mountains of beautiful Montana, has many wonderful entries in the Radio JOVE Archive. Read this article about his Observatory, in the June 2006 Radio JOVE Bulletin.

Last summer I was camping in the Rocky Mountains, and I stopped at his home shown above. Unfortunately he was not in. I hope to meet him some day.

Studying Solar events, I found his chart above showing five traces: Radio JOVE 20.1 MHz, NML 25.2 kHz, NLK 24.8 kHZ, a skylight sensor, and a magnetometer.

It shows the great type III storm of November 11-17 2006.

Above is the STEREO WAVES spectrum for November 16.


Storm statistics from Eastwood et al., 2009 , Fig. 3.


SOHO ultraviolet images at 304 and 171 angstrom.

The Sun is becoming more active, and we expect great radio storms like this one soon.