TY - JOUR
T1 - Ionospheric Response to the Solar Eclipse of 21 August 2017 in Millstone Hill (42N) Observations
AU - Goncharenko, Larisa P.
AU - Erickson, Philip J.
AU - Zhang, Shun Rong
AU - Galkin, Ivan
AU - Coster, Anthea J.
AU - Jonah, Olusegun F.
N1 - Funding Information:
Millstone Hill operations and research at MIT Haystack Observatory are supported by cooperative agreement AGS-1242204 between the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For eclipse activities, MIT Haystack was partially supported by NASA grant NNX17AH71G. Millstone Hill ISR data are publicly available through the Madrigal database at http://madrigal. haystack.mit.edu/madrigal/. Manually scaled digisonde data are available by request from I. Galkin.
Publisher Copyright:
©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2018/5/28
Y1 - 2018/5/28
N2 - This study examines the ionospheric changes associated with the solar eclipse of 21 August 2017. The effects associated with the passage of the eclipse shadow were observed more than 1,000 km away from the totality at midlatitudes using the Millstone Hill incoherent scatter radar and digisonde. There was a 30–40% decrease in electron density, a 100- to 220-K decrease in electron temperature, and a 50- to 140-K decrease in ion temperature. Surprisingly, the greatest decrease in electron density occurred above 200 km. The most unexpected effect was a large 20- to 40-m/s upward vertical drift observed in the topside ionosphere right after the local maximum obscuration. We suggest that this drift led to a posteclipse increase in the topside electron density.
AB - This study examines the ionospheric changes associated with the solar eclipse of 21 August 2017. The effects associated with the passage of the eclipse shadow were observed more than 1,000 km away from the totality at midlatitudes using the Millstone Hill incoherent scatter radar and digisonde. There was a 30–40% decrease in electron density, a 100- to 220-K decrease in electron temperature, and a 50- to 140-K decrease in ion temperature. Surprisingly, the greatest decrease in electron density occurred above 200 km. The most unexpected effect was a large 20- to 40-m/s upward vertical drift observed in the topside ionosphere right after the local maximum obscuration. We suggest that this drift led to a posteclipse increase in the topside electron density.
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U2 - 10.1029/2018GL077334
DO - 10.1029/2018GL077334
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85047540451
VL - 45
SP - 4601
EP - 4609
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
SN - 0094-8276
IS - 10
ER -