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Thunderstorm III

Thunderstorm III

Professor Michael C.Kelley and Steven Baker, a graduate student in electrical engineering, recently launched a Black Brant IX from NASA Wallops Flight Facility in a continuing investigation of the electromagnetic coupling between lightning and the Earth's ionosphere. The rocket was instrumented with vector electric and magnetic field probes provided by Cornell Unversity, a lightning imager from the University of Washington Geophysics Department, particle detectors from the University of New Hampshire, a star imager to provide absolute attitude informations from the Technical University of Denmark, and a Fluxgate Vector Magnetometer from the Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory.

Below is a plot of the electric field data from t+100 to t+120 seconds (about 175 km). The top two frames are perpendicular channels & show the field modulated at the rocket spin frequency.The bottom two frames are parallel channels and show the effects of the ACS gas bursts from t=100 to t=104 seconds.

Much more interesting page of whistlers observed on the flight complete with sound file, time series, and periodograms.


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PLEASE send comments about these pages to wes@ece.cornell.edu.
Last updated 2002 January 9.
Major development 1996 March 9.