Space Weather Monitors SID Users Manual - Stanford Solar Center ...

Space Weather Monitors SID Manual
How did we get our SID Monitors?
To monitor a VLF signal, we need a radio receiver that can “tune” to very low frequency
stations, an antenna to pick up these VLF signals, and a computer to keep track of the
data. Since most consumer radios cannot pick up the very low frequency signals, we
needed to design our own radio receiver and antenna. This combination of receiver and
antenna we call a Solar Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance Monitor (SID).
People in the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), remember
that our Sun is a variable star, have designed and been using for years a radio receiver to
pick up the VLF signals we need to track. Their website
http://www.aavso.org/observing/programs/solar/sid.shtml
tells how to build the AAVSO inexpensive model. Although the electronic circuit is easy
to assemble, it requires a good deal of expertise to debug and tune.
Through the Stanford Solar SID Project, we teamed up with educators and electronics
experts to design a more robust and easier to use monitor that comes preassembled and
pretuned. To use it, students need to build their own antenna (quick and easy), hook the
monitor to a small computer (old and slow is ok), and start taking data! Our SID monitor
was designed to do research in a classroom environment – its goal is for simplicity and its
focus is on detecting solar events. More information on the SID monitor program is
available at:
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/sidmonitor/
In association with Stanford’s Holographic Array for Ionospheric Lightning (HAIL)
project and under the direction of Professor Uman Inan, we have also designed a
research-quality monitor that will track not only solar effects on the ionosphere but night
time ones as well. Nicknamed AWESOME, these monitors function similarly to the SID
monitors though with more sensitivity. AWESOME monitors produce data that are
useful not only to students but also researchers studying the physical nature of changes in
the lower ionosphere produced by thunderstorms and lightning discharges. More
information about the AWESOME monitors is available at:
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/AWESOME/
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