Investigation of the Sudden Solar Ionospheric Disturbance using Radio Telescope

Adam Aqasha,Andrien Zheng,Hoe Teck Tan,Sneha Athreya

doi:10.1051/epjconf/202024007003

Abstract

Low-frequency radio telescopes are cheap and useful devices for the investigation of terrestrial and extra-terrestrial emissions. These emissions come either from the Sun and the planet Jupiter to terrestrial emissions. This project aims to investigate the Very Low Frequency (VLF) waves from mid-August to October 2019 using Radio JOVE (20 MHz) and SSID (3-30 kHz) to observe for the occurrence of solar flares and see how if the radio telescopes that the team set up is reliable. This will allow us future students aspiring to learn about astronomy to examine solar flares in detail during the upcoming solar maximum. Not many flares were detected as this period happens to be a solar minimum. However, a series of flares occurred between 30 September 2019 and 1 October 2019, which the telescopes have been able to detect, particularly SSID.

Highlights

Solar events have great influences over the Solar System
Radio JOVE was set up at National Junior College (NJC) while the SSID was placed at the School of Science and Technology (SST)
The graphs for Radio JOVE show changes in radio signal against local time in Singapore, while SSID shows the change in radio signals against Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is 8 hours behind Singapore

Summary

Introduction

On Earth, the understanding of these events is paramount They produce streams of high energy particles which greatly affect the Earth’s space weather and may cause hazards to the space-stations, the spacecrafts and the astronauts. Massive solar events may affect the terrestrial systems. They sometimes post dangers to the satellite systems as well as causing blackouts to the electric power grids. We focus on the solar activities like the solar flares and the coronal mass ejections. These activities cause disturbances to the ionosphere. Any disturbance to the ionosphere will affect the reflection of the radio waves. We investigate how these solar events affect the radio waves in the Very Low Frequency regime

The Ionosphere

Solar Flares

Methodology

Results and Discussion

Conclusion