ResourceName
Australian Space Weather Services Tennant Creek Ionogram
ReleaseDate
2021-03-29 17:14:50Z
Description
Ionograms are an image of frequency versus time delay (virtual height) of HF echoes from the ionosphere recorded by an ionosonde. An ionosonde is a swept frequency HF pulsed radar used to monitor the ionosphere. SWS WDC has archived ionogram data from 26 stations, 12 of them are still active at present. A vertical analog ionosonde had been installed at Tennant Creek and sounded since 02/05/1985 to 12/11/1985. The vertical sounding ionosondes normally sweep in frequency from about 1 to 21.5 MHz. Frequency step resolution is 5kHz, with up to 4095 steps available. The step interval is variable, becoming more coarse at higher frequencies as ionograms are generally displayed on a logarithmic scale. Every five minutes, a Ionogram data file was recorded. The raw ionogram is recorded in a film, which will be posted to Sydney SWS head office. SWS manually scaled and archived all ionogram films. Ther is no digital raw or clean ionogram data for Tennant Creek. The Tennant Creek scaled hourly ionospheric data include parameters of foF2, foF1, FoE, foEs, fbEs, fmin, fxl, f'scaling F/s, M(3000)F2, h'F2, h'F, h'E, h'Es, h'Scaling R/S and Type Es. They are avalable since 02/05/1985 to 12/11/1985.
The Tennant Creek median data of foF2 and M(3000)F2 are available since 05/1985 to 11/1985. Tennant Creek station was closed in November 1985.
Acknowledgement
We are thankful to the Space Weather Network, Bureau of Meteorology of Australia for the observations of Tennant Creek ionogram data.
Contacts
InformationURL
Name
Documentation (not with most browsers)
URL
Description
includes descriptions of data format of raw ionogram data, clean ionogram data and scaled data
Language
en
The manually scaled data is calibrated and the autoscaled data is uncalibrated.
Name
Virtual Height
Description
The apparent height of an ionospheric layer deduced from the time delay of a reflected radio pulse upon the assumption that it travelled at the speed of light over its entire path. However, the radio wave actually slows down as it is refracted so that the virtual height is greater than the true height of the refracting layer.
Cadence
PT60M
Units
Km
ValidMin
50
ValidMax
1000
Mixed