During the summer school, Nathaniel and Bharat worked with other groups of students to design short ISR experiments which were then run on the Poker Flat Incoherent Scatter Radar (PFISR). The groups then analyzed this data in conduction with data from other ISRs, SuperDARN, and other sources. The student groups prepared research presentations with the data and presented their findings at a seminar this morning.
When the students were not busy researching or attending lectures, they took advantage of the beautiful nature in Banff. On Wednesday, the school took an excursion to Johnston Canyon and hiked to two different waterfalls. The photo above shows Nathaniel and Bharat on this hike.
VT Students Attend 2012 ISR Summer Workshop
By: Nathaniel Frissell on: Sat., Aug. 04, 2012 10:01 PM EDT (7879 Reads)
|
|
Ph.D. students Bharat Kunduri and Nathaniel Frissell spent this past week in Banff, Canada at the 2012 NSF Incoherent Scatter Radar (ISR) Summer School. During the week, they attended lectures given by leading international researchers in the field of ISR and interacted with other space science students from around the world.
Incoherent scatter radar is a type of radar that is able to remote sense ionospheric plasma properties such as electron density, ion and electron temperature, and ion velocities. This is done by measureing the ion acoustic and plasma waves using very large radars that operate at frequencies typically around 500 MHz with approximately 2 megawatts of power or more. ISRs often complement SuperDARN radars, which are coherent scatter radars. This is because ISRs are able to provide plasma measurements SuperDARN can not, but have much smaller spatial coverage. Also, unlike SuperDARN which operates continuously, ISRs can typically only be operated for limited amounts of time. |
