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Australian
Advanced Telescopes User Group |
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Advances in technology over recent years has greatly
increased the capabilities to view, study and research a wide range of astronomical
subjects. The amateur astronomer can now produce results that surpass those of
professional astronomers of even ten years ago. Astrogaze
provides an insight to the interests of an amateur astronomer in Australia. I hope you
enjoy your visit and come back often.
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Star
Trails of the Southern Celestial Pole. |
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Taken at my 'dark sky site' near
Rushworth, in Northern Victoria. The SMC is clearly seen smeared in the top left area of
the photograph. Taken using an Olympus OM10 with Kodak ED-3
slide film, exposure approximately 85 minutes. |
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Space weather refers to the
conditions on the Sun that in turn affect the Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere
through the interaction with the solar wind. During ‘disturbed’ solar conditions
this influence can severely disrupt ground based and space borne technology, the study of
solar weather conditions and predictions of disturbances is therefore of vital importance.
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| The linked pages provide information on
current solar conditions and links to numerous useful space weather web site resources. |
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| Sferics, Tweeks and Whistlers |
| As astronomers we look towards the sky and at times forget
that our own planet Earth can be observed from our home observatories with relatively
simple equipment. Earth is surrounded by a magnetic field, in a region called the
magnetosphere, which is disturbed by high energy particles carried on the solar wind. When
a radio receiver is tuned to very low frequencies (VLF) the electrical disturbances within
and conducted by the magnetosphere can be received together with lightning within a large
area around a listener. At VLF ( 500Hz - 10KHz ) the Earth's natural radio signals
can be heard such as sferics, tweeks and the eerie yet beautiful whistler.
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| The linked pages show the results of my VLF observing. |
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