FACE off

(UPDATED)

The run last night was pretty useless. Although conditions were optically good no activity occurred at all and the ionosphere essentially disappeared. The one quiet arc that we saw did not come to anything and although a substorm did occur, it was not until our run had finished and the optical conditions had deteriorated.



It is an ASK run tonight and we have bad skies with some rain and snow today. The ionosphere was originally perky but then faded. It does seem to be coming back a bit now, perhaps due to some IMF-Mag coupling since Bz has been southward a few times this evening for 10-40 minutes. The slow solar wind speed (~350 km/s) means quite a delay before the effects may be felt here.



We have canceled tomorrow night; I was originally intending to run since the solar wind stream should be rotating into view. However it is Southampton's last opportunity for ASK and so we have given them the chance. I am unsure what the weather will be like though. We are going to run on both Sunday and Monday and hopefully the weather will be good...

UPDATE (20:00 UT): Conditions have improved, the sky is clearing, auroral arcs can be seen and there is a quite strong E-layer. We have just switched over to arc1.

First FACE

It is beautifully clear tonight, though the ionosphere is currently weak with little sign of geomagnetic activity. Not sure that the solar wind holds much promise either but it is still early.

We are currently running DROP-HOAX and Andrew is running ASK for Southampton (though I am keeping an eye on it at the moment whilst he finalises scan patterns for FACE tonight). AT 19 UT we will swap over to FACE and see if we can measure some field aligned currents in a nice arc, then after any substorm activity we will switch over to BATTY and hope for black aurora...

After the run last night we saw some great aurora; it virtually filled the sky and was set off by some wonderful shooting stars. Maybe even saw some omega bands, though I am not sure - camera data will tell us later.

ASK run update

(updated)

Things have improved. A period of sustained negative IMF has led to a nicely active substorm. A quiet arc was visible overhead as the clouds departed. Things have been ticking over nicely since then.

The ESR is now working after a strange problem with the ion line data recorder. Not sure why it was unable to write to the recorder or why it started working again but operations began at 21:22:39 UT. Only 2 hours 22 minutes lost, not so bad really as the conditions were not great then anyway. I hope that means that I won't be charged for those hours.

No sign of my dinner and so I can only assume that Mike's aim of focusing the old DASI camera has taken much longer than the estimated 30 minutes. :-(

Update: Aha, dinner is in the process of being cooked. Hurrah!

Cancellation + ASK

Yesterday's run (LANCS) was cancelled based on both weather and potential geomagnetic activity. Sadly it turned out that the weather was not so bad and that there was an unexpected upswing in the activity with a couple of substorms going off. Since the cameras were not ready anyway it didn't really matter. Too bad but c'est la vie.

Andrew ran HIPI for the first time yesterday with some promising results.

Tonight ASK is running and from 17 UT X mode heating is also occurring in an effort to detect the sodium emission using super-Sparkle. Unfortunately the ionosphere is currently incredibly weak, geomagnetic activity is low and last time I was outside it was snowing. Steve Crothers should be starting MISS up at the ESR shortly. As things stand it is generally pointless but unfortunately optimism stopped me from canceling. It will be an opportunity to determine whether the 'new' Steffe experiment is suitable (or at least workable) for the southward low-elevation pointing direction. I suspect it will turn out not to be and we will see if a suitable replacement can be shoved in.

10th November 2006 -EISCAT campaign!

Hello all,  another campaign begins next week but Andrew and I are already here trying to set things up in time for our first runs.

Lots to do, notably we need to set up several pieces of optical kit:
DASI
DASI2
SuperSparkle

So far we only have SuperSparkle with us, the rest should have arrived yesterday delivered by DHL.  Except it wasn't and now we are still waiting for it to arrive today.  After much phonecalling it will allegedly be here between 5.30 and 6pm.

More later...

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