CEDAR email: Arecibo Call for Proposals (ISR Observations): Thursday, September 5, 2019 Deadline

Tue Aug 27 07:55:15 MDT 2019

Arecibo Call for Proposals (ISR Observations): Thursday, September 5, 2019 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 430MHz Incoherent Scatter Radar with a deadline for September 5, 2019 (17:00 AST, 21:00 UTC). These petitions should be for the usage of the Incoherent Scatter Radar, as well for the passive and active optical instruments. Once the request is submitted and accepted, the same would be valid for six-month beginning January 1, 2020 (or a year depending on the request), after which it will need to be re-submitted to maintain validity. This call does NOT include proposals for use of the HF Facility for ionospheric modification.

Information about observing proposals and policies can be found at http://www.naic.edu/ao/scientist-user-portal/proposal-submission-system/policies-and-guidelines<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/ao/scientist-user-portal/proposal-submission-system/call-for-proposals. 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<mailto: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<mailto: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 G M Brum
Deputy Director of Science Operations - Arecibo Observatory
University Of Central Florida (UCF)

Technical information.

The 430 MHz Incoherent Scatter Radar.

The 430 MHz Incoherent Scatter Radar (ISR) is capable of extremely sensitive diagnostics of the ionosphere. Power from the pulsed 2.5 MW (about 1.3 to 1.5 MW) transmitter can be split with arbitrary ratio into two beams, allowing sensing through the observing region simultaneously with sensing outside of it or near its edge (Note: Currently, due to the damages caused by the Hurricane Maria, we are running only one beam). 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 are 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<mailto:msulzer at naic.edu>) or Nestor Aponte (naponte at naic.edu<mailto:naponte at naic.edu>).

Optical capabilities.

At Arecibo we have a variety of airglow (passive) and lidar (active) instrumentation. Presently, airglow sensing equipment includes two Tilting-Filter Photometers, two Fabry-Perot Interferometers, and All-sky Imagers. These instruments are located about 1000 feet from the center of the incoherent scatter radar and at the Arecibo Observatory Remote Optical Facility (AO-ROF) (96 miles east of the Arecibo Observatory).

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 active optical instrument support for ISR experiments must be included in the proposal. We encourage the PIs to contact our staff for special optical configurations and further information: Shikha Raizada (shikha at naic.edu<mailto:shikha at naic.edu>) or Jens Lautenbach (jlautenbach at naic.edu<mailto:jlautenbach at naic.edu>).

The AO-ROF is located on Culebra Island (18o 18' 18"N; 65o 18' 05"W), Puerto Rico, 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. Request for passive optical instrument support for ISR experiments also must be included in the proposal. For further information you can contact Pedrina Santos (pterra at naic.edu<mailto:pterra at naic.edu>).

Passive Radio instrumentation

Request for passive radio instrument support is also available. AO has a cluster of passive radio instrumentation, which includes GPS receivers, HF receivers, Lightning detector, VLF receivers, ionosonde and riometer. Part of this equipment belongs to our users. For further information, please contact Christiano Brum (cbrum at naic.edu<mailto:cbrum at naic.edu>)

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