Radio Amateurs help NASA to receive solar images
On Thursday, we had an item titled 'Monster prominence erupts from Sun' which featured video (seen right) recorded by Nasa's STEREO-A and STEREO-B spacecraft.
NASA's STEREO spacecraft are two space-based observatories - one moving ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind. With this pair of viewpoints, you can see the structure and evolution of solar active regions as they rotate with the sun, and storms as they shoot from the Sun and move out through space to sometimes intersect the Earth.
Space Weather has become of great practical importance, affecting among other human activities, spacecraft operations, powerline and pipeline operations on Earth and, as every radio amateur knows, radio propagation through and via the ionosphere.
However, it's a little known fact that amateur radio operators do more than just use the data from STEREO - they help Nasa to collect it too.
James Miller G3RUH, wrote to Southgate to say:
"STEREO data is downloaded for NASA continuously by radio amateurs, every day, automatically. The 20m dish at Bochum is essentially unmanned, and for this operation is remotely controlled from home, mainly by myself James Miller G3RUH, Hartmut Paesler DL1YDD and Michael Lengruesser DD5ER."
He adds: "What is interesting is that, as a former command station for amateur radiosatellites AO-13 and AO-40, remote management of a radio telescope is pretty much the same enterprise as managing a spacecraft. Same commitment, huge amount of monitoring, same wierd hours, tons of software ..."
73 de James G3RUH
Please see also:
Stereo A/B Spacecraft Telemetry Reception at Bochum
http://www.amsat.org/amsat/articles/g3ruh/127.html
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