CEDAR email: Subject: Arecibo Call for Ionospheric Modification (HF facility) Proposals: Friday, August 12, 2016 Deadline

Tue Jul 12 07:21:16 MDT 2016

Arecibo Call for Ionospheric Modification (HF facility) Proposals: Friday,
August 12, 2016 Deadline

Dear Colleagues

(Please distribute this call to any colleagues who might be interested)

We extend an invitation for proposals for the use of the Arecibo Observatory
HF facility with a deadline of August 12, 2016 (17:00 AST, 21:00 UTC). These
petitions should be for usage of the HF facility and Incoherent Scatter
Radar, as well for the passive and active optical instruments. Once the
request is submitted and accepted, it is valid for scheduling until August
11, 2017, after which it will need to be re-submitted to maintain validity.
This call will cover at least two campaigns of 5-to-6 days around new moon
periods, the number might vary depending on the number of proposals awarded.

Information about observing proposals and policies can be found at
http://www.naic.edu/~astro/proposals/proposal.shtml. Proposals must be
submitted using the web-based cover form, which can be found online at
http://www.naic.edu/~astro/proposals/hfprop.php. For this deadline we have
enabled direct uploading of the PDF containing the main body of your
proposal via the proposal website. If you do not upload your PDF, you should
send it by separate email to proposal at naic.edu. 

Technical information about our facilities and instrumentation as well as
the contacts for specific support are found below. For any further
information not addressed in this communication you can contact Christiano
Brum (cbrum at naic.edu).

We hope to obtain your proposals real soon and continue to do outstanding
research during the upcoming year as we have done in the past.

Sincerely,

Christiano Brum

1. Technical information.

1.1. HF facility.

The HF facility at Arecibo consists of six 100 KW HF transmitters that feed
the 300 m dish using a Cassegrain feed. This feed consists of crossed
dipoles located near the center of the surface of the dish that transmit
upward to a light wire grid sub reflector that is supported from the three
main towers. This element illuminates the dish, which transmits a narrow
beam vertically. There are three crossed dipoles centered at 5.1 MHz, giving
22 dB of gain, and three more at 8.175 MHz, for almost 26 dB. The first
frequency has been used in two successful campaigns, and the second is
expected to be ready for the coming campaign. The transmitter building is
located in the maintenance area and twelve three inch coaxial lines feed the
individual antenna elements. A system for setting the timing and phasing of
the transmitters is located in a control room extending from the transmitter
building. For further information you can contact Michael Sulzer
(msulzer at naic.edu).

1.2. 430 MHz Incoherent Scatter Radar.

The 430 MHz Incoherent Scatter Radar (ISR) is capable of extremely sensitive
diagnostics for HF modification experiments. Power from the pulsed 2.5 MW
(currently about 1.3 to 1.5 MW) transmitter can be split with arbitrary
ratio into two beams, allowing sensing through the center of the modified
region simultaneously with sensing outside of it or near its edge. Possible
geometries are set by the locations of the two feeds on opposite sides of
the rotatable azimuth arm, with the minimum zenith angle differences set by
the physical sizes of the feeds. Raw data can be collected with a 25 MHz
wide data taking system for later analysis while a narrower bandwidth system
is used to provide on line monitoring. The current coding technique allows
300 m range resolution on the enhanced plasma line while ion line and
natural plasma line data are also recorded from the same radar pulses. There
some restrictions in simultaneous viewing resulting from the extremely high
signal power in the enhanced plasma line. For further information you can
contact Michael Sulzer (msulzer at naic.edu).

1.3. Optical capability.

At Arecibo we have a variety of airglow and lidar instrumentation.
Presently, airglow sensing equipment includes two Tilting-Filter
Photometers, three Fabry-Perot Interferometers, and two All-sky Imagers.
These instruments are located about 1000 feet from the center of the
incoherent scatter radar.

The "active" optical instruments (lidars) have the capability to monitor the
upper stratosphere to lower thermosphere. We have three systems, two of
which are configurable to monitor one each of the meteoric metals: Na, Fe,
Ca, or Ca+. Alternatively, one of the two metal lidars can be configured as
a Rayleigh lidar to measure temperature from the upper stratosphere to the
mesosphere, from about 35 to 70 km. The third lidar is a Doppler-resonance
lidar that measures temperatures within the metal layer by sensing the
Doppler broadening in the D1 resonance line of K.

Request for optical instrument support for HF experiments must be included
in the proposal. We encourage the PIs to contact our staff for special
optical configurations and further information: Jonathan Friedman
(jonathan at naic.edu), Shikha Raizada (shikha at naic.edu), or Jens Lautenbach
(jlautenbach at naic.edu).

1.4. Arecibo Observatory Remote Optical Facility (AO-ROF).

The AO-ROF is located on Culebra Island (18 18' 18"N; 65 18' 05"W), Puerto
Rico, about 96 miles east of the Arecibo Observatory. The design of the
facility enables it to host two optical instruments requiring large domes
(5-ft diameter) and four optical instruments that require smaller domes
(1-ft diameter). Exterior space is also available for the installation of
radio receivers or other kinds of instrumentation.

For further information you can contact Pedrina Santos (pterra at naic.edu) or
Eva Robles (erobles at naic.edu).

2. Ionospheric prediction.

For every campaign the SAS department will be providing the F2 peak
parameters prediction in order to help the users to define the best way to
conduct their experiments. These predictions will be accessible on our
website at least a month prior of every campaign. The predictions will
provide different scenarios depending on the solar activity, historical
ionosonde and ISR registers. For further information you can contact
Christiano Brum (cbrum at naic.edu)

______________________________________________

Christiano Garnett Marques Brum

<https://insider.sri.com/tools/organization/reportingStructureChart.php?uid=
E27907> Senior Research Associate (Assistant Director)

Space & Atmospheric Sciences / Arecibo Observatory

Advanced Technology & Systems Division

SRI International

HC3 BOX 53995, Arecibo PR 00612 

787-878-2612x242

______________________________________________

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