UAF Program Facilities
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AMISR is a modular, mobile radar facility that will be used by scientists and students from around the world to conduct studies of the upper atmosphere and to observe space weather events. AMISR is currently under construction. The first radar face will be deployed in Poker Flat, Alaska. Following completion of the first face, the remaining two faces will be built in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, Canada. Subsequent locations will be determined by a scientific advisory panel. Since each face of the AMISR fulnctions independently, the AMISR can be deployed in up to three separate locations at the same time.
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AMISR Radar
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The Arecibo 430 MHz radar uses incoherent scatter to determine the characteristics of the ionosphere. The Arecibo radar is extremely powerful and sensitive due to the large aperature of the Arecibo antenna. The system is capable of making very accurate measurements of many ionospheric parameters at high signal to noise ratios including unique capabilities for high resolution light ion and plasma line measurements. The Arecibo facility is also host to a number of active and passive optical systems which provide an important complement to the radar system for investigations of the upper atmosphere.
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The Jicamarca Radio Observatory (JRO) is the equatorial anchor of the Western Hemisphere chain of incoherent scatter radar (ISR) observatories extending from Lima - Peru to Sondre Stromfjord, Greenland. The JRO is the premier scientific facility in the world for studying the equatorial ionosphere. It consists of three 1.5 MW transmitters and an antenna array of 18,432 dipole elements, covering an area of approximately 85,000 m2. This vast antenna array operates at 50 MHz and is capable of high performance radar imaging of the equatorial ionosphere.
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The Millstone Hill Observatory, located in Westford, Massachusetts, is a broad-based atmospheric sciences research facility owned and operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Atmospheric Sciences Group, which staffs and manages the observatory, is a part of M.I.T.'s Haystack Observatory, a basic research organization whose focus is radio wave and radar science, instrumentation and techniques. The central instrument at the Millstone Hill Observatory is the 440 MHz incoherent scatter radar which is used with a fixed 68m Zenith pointing antenna and a 46m fully steerable antenna system. This combination of antenna systems provides Millstone Hill with the largest field of view of all the incoherent scatter radars.
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The Sondrestrom Upper Atmospheric Research Facility is located in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. The facility is operated by SRI International in Menlo Park, California. The facility has been operating in Greenland since 1983 and continues to be in high demand by the scientific community. The facility is host to more than 20 instruments, the majority of which provide unique and complementary information about the arctic upper atmosphere. The centerpiece instrument of the facility is an L-band incoherent scatter (IS) radar with a 32 m fully steerable antenna. Sondrestrom is situated to observe upper atmosphere phenomenon associated with auroral precipitation and the polar ionosphere.
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The SuperDARN network is currently comprised of nine radars in the northern hemisphere and six in the south. The construction of all the radars is virtually identical, with some minor differences in Antenna design and to accommodate the physical conditions at the site. Each of the radars has two arrays of antenna towers, the primary array consists of sixteen towers, and the secondary, interferometer array, consists of four towers. In contrast to the Incoherent Scatter Radars operated by the UAF Program the SuperDARN radars are designed for HF coherent scatter observations of the ionosphere. These systems provide extraordinarily large fields of view which allow for the realtime mapping of ionospheric convection patterns.
