** ALASKA. Radio waves 'make the sky glow': Artificial aurora to be created over
western Arctic === [CBC] CBC September 20, 2017
Similar:
Over
four nights starting Thursday, an Alaska scientist will try to create his own
artificial aurora that could be visible as far away as Yukon.
The
experiment is out of the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP)
Observatory at Gakona, Alaska, and is planned for 9:30 p.m.
Chris Fallen,
an assistant research professor at the Geophysical Institute of University of
Alaska Fairbanks, will attempt to create the artificial airglow in the
sky.
"It's sometimes called the artificial aurora or radio-enhanced
aurora or radio-enhanced airglow," Fallen said.
"What that means is that
powerful radio waves from the ground, from a facility like HAARP, can make the
sky glow."
Understanding the aurora
Fallen is investigating which
transmissions make the artificial auroras the brightest.
"The reason why
certain types of radio wave transmission cause the upper atmosphere to glow the
same colours as the natural aurora is a process that's not very well
understood," he said.
Knowledge gathered from Fallen's experiment could
also help better understand the natural aurora.
It should also provide
information on how communications between satellite and the Earth are affected
by the ionosphere.
This would be important for navigation applications,
Fallen said.
If conditions are clear, people in Whitehorse and Dawson
City, Yukon, will have a good chance of snapping photos of the artificial
aurora.
"In the North, your best chance of observing the artificial
aurora is actually to take pictures of it," he said, explaining the glow may be
too low for the naked eye to see.
The success of his experiment will
involve a good bit of "luck," with the weather being a major factor, Fallen
said.
Observation efforts in the past have been hampered due to cloudy
conditions, he noted. This time, he'll postpone the experiment if the weather
doesn't cooperate.
"The facility, when in operation, burns almost 600
gallons of diesel fuel per hour. So that's quite expensive," he
said.
Aside from taking pictures, people who own a standard shortwave
radio will be able to tune in to hear the radio frequency that creates the
lights.
Fallen expects it will sound something like a fax
machine.
Turning on the aurora switch with HAARP
Fairbanks Daily
News-Miner-Sep 14, 2017
FAIRBANKS
— People travel North from all over for a chance to see the aurora. Soon, Chris
Fallen will make his own.
Sometime around the darkness of the Sept. 19
new moon, the space physicist will travel to an antenna field off the Copper
River. There, he will pulse transmitters on and off to create radio-induced
aurora, also known as airglow. The UAF researcher will use the HAARP facility to
attempt to do from below what the sun does from above to create a display of
aurora.
"Energetic electrons ionize and excite gases in the upper
atmosphere," he said. "They release photons when they de-excite again. Here,
we’re doing the process from below with HF radio waves."
The
High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program is a group of high-frequency
radio transmitters powered by four diesel tugboat generators and one from a
locomotive. Using an extensive field of antennae, the transmitters send a
focused beam of radio-wave energy into the aurora zone. There, that energy can
stimulate a speck of the electrical sun-Earth connection about 100 miles above
our heads. UAF’s Geophysical Institute, where Fallen works, took over operation
of HAARP in 2015.
In a repeat of an experiment he did in February, Fallen
will create a temporary bright spot in the night sky that will be the size of a
thumbnail at arm’s length. He will examine this airglow from beneath and from an
all-sky camera at Poker Flat Research Range north of Fairbanks.
Fallen
will post on Twitter — twitter.com/ctfallen — when he is tickling the ionosphere
from below so people can look for it and perhaps take photographs of the faint
phenomenon in the sky. He’s never seen it, but a photographer once a red splotch
of HAARP-induced airglow during a campaign. Because of the configuration of the
human eye, airglow might be easier when looking just to the side.
"You
almost have to use averted vision to see it," he said.
Fallen wants to
answer a few questions with his research: What causes the brightest airglow and
why does it happen? How do radio waves interact with plasmas in the upper
atmosphere?
"Artificial airglow can teach us things about natural
aurora," he said.
At the HAARP facility about 11 miles from the junction
of the Glenn and Richardson highways north of Glennallen, Fallen will request
that the operator of the antenna field turn on transmitters for about 90
seconds, then turn them off for a minute.
Fallen will have about two
hours to complete his experiment. He’ll repeat the procedure several times with
energy aimed at the geomagnetic field line. This will result in artificial
aurora about 150 miles above Glennallen. The farther an observer is from HAARP
on the Tok Cutoff Road, the lower the airglow will appear on the
horizon.
Fallen created a website related to the project:
Since
the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute has
provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned
Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute (via Artie Bigley,
DXLD)
From the Haarpoon website above:
15 September 2017
The
next HAARP experiment campaigned is planned for late September. Exact campaign
dates have yet to be released. I will post updates on selected experiments here
and at
Those
twits say it all started at 19z Sept 21. Frequencies mentioned, usually as MHz
without extra decimals were in kHz: 2750, 2800, 2850, 3200, 3400, 3800, 4000,
4100, 4200, 4500, 9500 (gh)
