{"id":4317,"date":"2015-12-10T17:15:05","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T22:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/?p=4317"},"modified":"2015-12-16T17:20:25","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T22:20:26","slug":"two-eyes-needed-to-research-outer-space-static","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/2015\/12\/10\/two-eyes-needed-to-research-outer-space-static\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Eyes Needed to Research Outer Space Static"},"content":{"rendered":"

CAS scientists view ionosphere from both hemispheres<\/h2>\n
\"BU<\/p>\n

BU Imaging Science Laboratory researchers (from left) Carlos Martinis, Michael Mendillo, Joei Wroten, and Jeffrey Baumgardner. Photos by Jackie Ricciardi.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Who says you can\u2019t be two places at the same time?<\/p>\n

At an MIT observatory west of Boston, a BU-built, three-foot-long, tubular camera stares with feline patience at the ionosphere, the electrically charged portion of the Earth\u2019s upper atmosphere. On the other side of the world, a similar device stargazes from frozen Antarctica. The two are opposite each other along the same magnetic field line<\/a> (the line along which forces of magnetic attraction and repulsion move). Whenever a disturbance creases the ionosphere, the two devices simultaneously capture what it looks like, as seen from two different hemispheres (and two different seasons, since it\u2019s summer there when it\u2019s winter here, and vice versa).<\/p>\n

Isolated cameras long have recorded ionospheric disruptions from one spot, says Michael Mendillo, a College of Arts & Sciences astronomy professor. But \u201cthese effects behave differently in different seasons. And so if you studied the effect in the Northern Hemisphere, you\u2019d get a different effect in the Southern Hemisphere\u2014same night, same disturbance.\u201d For a decade, BU\u2019s Imaging Science Laboratory<\/a>, headed by Mendillo (GRS\u201968,\u201971), has girdled the globe with about a dozen such devices, most of them paired with another along the same magnetic line. Sensors in South Carolina, Puerto Rico, and Columbia are linked along magnetic lines to three different sensors in Argentina. One in Italy soon will be partnered with another in South Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis camera here is about a $25,000 item,\u201d says Jeffrey Baumgardner, sounding like a proud father showing off his newborn as he opens a closet in the Imaging Science Laboratory to display the South Africa\u2013bound sensor. The lab\u2019s senior research scientist, Baumgardner (GRS\u201977) builds the sensors. (They\u2019re not backyard adornments; most are housed at observatories.) The Antarctic device is the only one he didn\u2019t construct; the lab is piggybacking off a sensor there run by a colleague at Utah State.<\/p>\n

Mendillo\u2019s lab began the research on the realization that a ripple in the ionosphere enters different hemispheres along the same magnetic lines, and that to understand the phenomenon requires two sets of eyes. \u201cIf we studied summer effects in one hemisphere and waited for winter effects in the same hemisphere six months later, the source of the disturbance\u2014say, a geomagnetic storm\u2014would be different,\u201d the professor says.<\/p>\n

\"Baumgardner\"<\/p>\n

Baumgardner built a dozen cameras to take images of the ionosphere from different points on Earth.<\/em><\/p>\n

The project is basic science and is in the fourth year of a five-year, $1.8 million National Science Foundation<\/a> grant. Yet there\u2019s a practical application, too, such that the Defense Department<\/a> is kicking in funding: ionosphere disruptions monkey with radio transmissions. \u201cThere have literally been stories where an airman is listening on the radio and it\u2019s going static, so he\u2019ll hit the receiver,\u201d says Mendillo, but \u201cthere\u2019s nothing wrong with the electronics; the problem is in the ionosphere.\u201d The project might help the military figure out areas to avoid in sending radio signals. \u201cIf a radio wave passes through a disturbance, it scintillates like crazy, and you can lose the information that you want to get,\u201d he says, from voice communications to GPS reception.<\/p>\n

With pictures taken every 10 minutes or so all night long, the sensors allow the lab to compare similarities and differences of the same disruption in different seasons, Mendillo says. For example, he points to a series of snapshots taken from Massachusetts and Antarctica on a June day in 2013: an aurora is seen in both, but its boundaries are different, with the Southern Hemisphere version much brighter. \u201cCould it be because it\u2019s summertime here and it\u2019s wintertime down there, and the solar radiation that makes the ionosphere is weaker in one season or the other?\u201d he asks, previewing the kind of questions the research seeks to answer.<\/p>\n

Why not probe the ionosphere from space? After all, the international space station orbits in it, Mendillo says. But the station isn\u2019t stationary, he notes; it passes through regions, making lengthy observations impossible. \u201cAn instrument from the ground only measures the local ionosphere, but it does it continuously,\u201d all night. \u201cIt gives us an image of where the ionosphere is being disrupted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Antarctic setup, surprisingly, might have been the easiest to arrange. Having to line up systems spanning the globe has introduced the lab to the nonscientific chores of figuring currency differences, varying import duties, and the like. \u201cOh God,\u201d Mendillo moans, \u201cthe logistics are just unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mendillo and members of his lab\u2014Baumgardner, Carlos Martinis (GRS\u201901,\u201906), a CAS research assistant professor of astronomy, senior research scientist Steven Smith, and senior staff researcher Joei Wroten\u2014are preparing new funding requests to enable them to spend the next 5 to 10 years analyzing the raw data. \u201cWhile I get to be called the principal investigator of the grants,\u201d says Mendillo, \u201cwhat I like to call the A-Team of the Imaging Science Lab actually made it happen,\u201d now \u201chelping to transform a big data source into forefront yields of space science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Author, Rich Barlow can be reached at barlowr@bu.edu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CAS scientists view ionosphere from both hemispheres BU Imaging Science Laboratory researchers (from left) Carlos Martinis, Michael Mendillo, Joei Wroten, and Jeffrey Baumgardner. Photos by Jackie Ricciardi. Who says you can\u2019t be two places at the same time? At an MIT observatory west of Boston, a BU-built, three-foot-long, tubular camera stares with feline patience at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7048,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[158,89,34,142,13,93,5,65,68],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4317"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7048"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4317"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4320,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4317\/revisions\/4320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}