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Documentation
Jupiter observations
My first observation of a Jupiter storm, May 30, 1979
The NICEro observatory started to monitor the Jovian storms back in 1979.
At t that time a Yaesu FRG-7 receiver was used with a long wire antenna.
The strip-chart recorder was home-built with the electronics to drive
the roll of paper and the pen and a pulse generator for time interval markers
(1 minute in this plot).
The signal was first recorded on tape, selected portions were then
strip-charted. Of course no measurements could be performed with such a
primitive
instrument but it triggered my curiosity for radioastronomy.
Many years elapsed since that day and I always feel the same thrill
when hearing the first bursts of a Jupiter storm..I believe that scientific
curiosity does not exclude some kind of aesthetic pleasure when listening
to the "Music of the Spheres"...
My last observation, August 23, 2009
The following is the plot of a seven minutes
Io-C
storm
recorded on August 23, 2009 at the frequency
of 20.1 MHz using Radio-SkyPipe. The staircase steps are temperature
calibrations using the RF-2020S noise
calibrator
The antenna is the two-elementsYagi.
this is the detailed bursts structure during one minute.
Click here for the audio
Look at the picture below, it shows in a bandwidth of 1 MHz, centered
on 20.1 MHz, the RF spectrum received
by the PERSEUS receiver and displayed by the SpectraVue software. The
frequency is on the vertical axis, time
goes from left to right, time stamps are shown every 2 minutes
The spectrum covers ca 13 minutes starting at 00:41UT.
The vertical zones with different intensities correspond to the temperature
calibration steps as shown above in the
SkyPipe plot. The "cloud" between 00:51 and 00:52 UT is the sequence
of bursts shown in the plot, it covers a
bandwidth of ca 300 kHz. Other bursts can be seen at the beginning
of the spectrum and just after the calibration steps.
The horizontal line is an interferring carrier at 20 MHz.
Archives
A document Jupiter Observations
2000 -2006 lists all the NICEro observations ( 54 observations)
of Jovians storms since year 2000.
For each observation the name of the corresponding Radio-SkyPipe
file (.spd) is shown together with the name of the audio file (if any)..
The Jovian source (Io-A, Io-B or Io-C) and the type of
burst ( L-burst, S-burst or mixed burst) is also given.
A picture of the .spd file is displayed and a snap shot of a
selected sequence of bursts is also shown for each observation.
This is a sample :
The System III Central Meridian Longitude of Jupiter (CML III) and the
Io Phase are given for the starting and ending time of each observation
.
It shall be pointed out that the probability of detecting the emission
depends on the values of the CML III and the Io Phase.
The following table shows the Jovian sources and the corresponding
CML III /Io Phase values. (ref: http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov
)
| Source |
CML III |
Io Phase |
Characteristics of emission |
| Io related source |
|
|
|
| Io-A |
200-290 |
195-265 |
Right Hand polarized, mostly L bursts |
| Io-B |
90-200 |
75-105 |
Right Hand polarized, mostly S bursts |
| Io-C |
290-10 |
225-250 |
Left Hand polarized, L and S bursts |
|
|
|
|
| Non-Io related sources |
|
|
|
|
A
|
200-290 |
|
|
|
B
|
90-200 |
|
|
|
C
|
290-10 |
|
|
Starting in year 2000 all the Jovian storms monitored at the
NICEro observatory have been archived (.spd and .wav files), some of them
can
also be found in the NASA RadioJove
archive
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