Sun & Ionosphere Monitoring Network

Abstract

The aim of the Sun & Ionosphere Monitoring Network (SIMONE) is to promote space weather research for K12 students during the successful International Heliospherical Year 2007 of the United Nations and the follow-up International Space Weather Initiative, which is exclusively focusing on space weather. Detecting solar flares with basic methods is done by measuring the intensity of long-wavelength radio signals. Their intensity varies due to disturbances of Earth lower ionosphere by, e.g. solar X-ray radiation. Changes of the conditions for the radio wave propagation are immediately detectable and are correlated to temporal behaviors of solar flares. The DLR-Neustrelitz has recently built a new special SIMONE receiver, which is able to communicate with SWACI (see http://swaciweb.dlr.de) without any external computer. This receiver is right now tested at selected high schools in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and international at a high school in Finland (northern Europe). SIMONE data are useful for various space weather studies, both on school and research level. Atmospheric phenomena caused by perturbations can be related to, e.g. thunder storms or atmospheric resonators. Understanding those phenomena is of major importance in a society which is more than ever relating operations on communication and navigation by modern radio systems.