RADIO ASTRONOMICAL AND SATELLITE STUDIES OF THE ATMOSPHERE*

Abstract

(North-Holland Publ. Co., Amsterdam, 1963, & 8s. 0). The title of this book is misleading. A better title would have been Radio studies of the atmosphere: for (apart from an excellent introductory paper by Hilde Kallmann-Bijl on the structure and composition of the atmosphere) the book is almost wholly devoted to one subject-probing the ionosphere by means of radio waves. Neither the description inside the jacket nor the preface says what the book is about: both assume that the reader already knows. Illumination dawns only when the list of contents is reached. The book is the record of the papers presented at a conference held at Corfu in June 1962, and the topics covered are grouped under six main headings. There are five papers in the section on “Radio star scintillation”, of which the first, an introductory survey by G. A. Harrower will be particularly useful to non-specialists. All these papers give a vivid picture of the difficulties caused by scintillation, which is one aspect of the “noise” problem overshadowing many of the topics discussed in the book: perhaps these skilled and patient experimenters would make more progress if they turned their hands to a less noisy method of geophysical investigation? The question is only a rhetorical one, of course, for they would not be interested in non-radio methods; and anyway they find the noise fascinating to study. The next section of the book, entitled “Radar astronomical studies”, discusses the probing of the ionosphere by radio waves reflected from two nearly-spherical Earth satellites, the Moon and Echo I. Then come several papers on “Cosmic noise absorption”, including a long and detailed review of ionospheric absorption by B. Hultqvist. The use of radio signals from artificial satellites is discussed next; there is a long review by J. Mass and papers on the Faraday effect by B. Burgess and R. S. Roger. The final section of the book is on solar-terrestrial relationships, covering such topics as sudden ionospheric disturbances. The book as a whole is a valuable and up-to-date survey of ionospheric studies. After the strictures at the beginning of this review, it is only fair to conclude by congratulating the editor and publishers on bringing out this handsome and clearly-printed volume less than 7 months after the conference. D. G. KING-HELE