Abstract
Abstract. We investigate the ionospheric behavior in conjugate hemispheres during the 3 October 2005 solar eclipse, on the basis of observations of electron temperature (Te) from the Defense Meteorological Satellites Program (DMSP) spacecraft, F2 layer critical frequency (foF2) and F2 layer peak height (hmF2) at the Grahamstown ionosonde station, and total electron content (TEC) from the Global Positioning System (GPS) station SUTH. The observations show that when the eclipse occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, there was a decrease in Te, an increase in foF2 and TEC, and an uprising in hmF2 in its conjugate region compared with their reference values. We also simulated the ionosphere behavior during this eclipse using a mid- and low-latitude ionospheric model. The simulations agree well with the observations. Because of the eclipse effect, there are far fewer photoelectrons travelling along the magnetic field lines from the eclipse region to the conjugate region, resulting in reduced photoelectron heating in the conjugate hemisphere which causes a drop in electron temperature and subsequent disturbances in the region.
Highlights
The ionospheric responses to a solar eclipse have been studied extensively with various methods, such as the Faraday rotation measurement, ionosonde network, incoherent scatter radar (ISR), Global Positioning System (GPS), and satellite measurements (e.g., Salah et al, 1986; Tsai and Liu, 1999; Afraimovich et al, 1998; Davis et al, 2000) as well as theoretical modelling (Stubbe, 1970; Muller-Wodarg et al, 1998; Boitman et al, 1999; Le et al, 2008a)
This paper presents an initial result on the ionospheric disturbance in the conjugate hemisphere during the total eclipse on 3 October
Observations from the Defense Meteorological Satellites Program (DMSP) F15 satellite show a great drop in electron temperature
Summary
The ionospheric responses to a solar eclipse have been studied extensively with various methods, such as the Faraday rotation measurement, ionosonde network, incoherent scatter radar (ISR), Global Positioning System (GPS), and satellite measurements (e.g., Salah et al, 1986; Tsai and Liu, 1999; Afraimovich et al, 1998; Davis et al, 2000) as well as theoretical modelling (Stubbe, 1970; Muller-Wodarg et al, 1998; Boitman et al, 1999; Le et al, 2008a) These studies have shown that there is an almost consistent behavior at low altitudes where there are distinct depletions in electron concentration and electron temperature during solar eclipses. We carry out a modeling study of the solar eclipse effects of the ionosphere at conjugate regions by using a theoretical ionosphere model and compare the simulations with the observations
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