Speaker
Description
The Earth’s ionosphere can be a nuisance for some navigation and communications systems. Knowledge of the state of the ionosphere helps improve the operational capabilities of such systems. The effect of solar eclipses on the state of the ionosphere leading to a significant decrease of the ionization level and thus losses of free electrons has been observed and studied for decades. Nevertheless, to date none of the existing models can fully predict the change in the 3D electron density distribution caused by a solar eclipse.
To measure the 3D effect of the electron density fluctuation in response to the April 2024 total solar eclipse, a network of low-cost global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) receivers called EclipseNB, in addition to a network of high-frequency (HF) ionospheric sounders, were designed, assembled and deployed by the Radio and Space Physics Laboratory at the University of New Brunswick during the period from April 2023 to March 2024. The infrastructure of EclipseNB is a provincial network consisting of fifteen low-cost GNSS receivers to monitor the plasma of the upper atmosphere during the solar eclipse. A small network of HF sounders consisting of one vertical and two passive oblique ionospheric sounders were also designed and strategically installed such that their ionospheric reflection points were located along the eclipse path of totality. GNSS raw observables were collected at a one-second sampling interval, while vertical and oblique ionograms obtained from HF instruments were collected every two minutes over the three days before, during, and after the eclipse.
The results of the ionospheric response in terms of the total electron content (TEC) obtained using GNSS receivers, as well as the characteristics of the ionospheric layers retrieved from HF sounders will be presented and quantitative analysis of the response provided.
| Keyword-1 | eclipse |
|---|---|
| Keyword-2 | ionosphere |
| Keyword-3 | GNSS HF |
