Comments on: Explore Earth's Ionosphere with Google Earth

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:07:31 +0000

Google ionoshere?What purpose does this serve?I been looking at the colors on the globe and it means what?
Current and predicted communications conditions

* Red – high frequencies (HF) are unavailable (>22 MHz)
* Yellow – lowest usable frequency (LUF) and maximum usable frequency (MUF) range is 15-22 MHz
* Green – LUF-MUF range is 8-15 MHz
* Blue – LUF-MUF range is 3-8 MHz

Now,Green means that the range 8-15 is good or bad?Red is Bad for 22mhz and up?Then what is red good for in mhz?So vague.Make it simple.Red is for WHAT?And what the heck is:
Communication Alert: HF 08-15 MHz

If I tune there my radio explodes?Dumbest over thought program ever.

By: Don

Don — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:51:45 +0000

Tammy, I tried it again to open the file "Ionosphere_WebShort_320Ã—240.mp4" and got the same error ("Unknown error number -8971") . I have the latest updates for Quicktime, running under XP/SP3.
I give up!

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:34:41 +0000

How do you get the time axis going (for the predictions)? It shows this feature in the video tutorial but I don't see anywhere to active it. When I first load the .kml file, there appears for about 1/3 of a second a slider in the upper right that looks like the right slider to access the time dimension, but then it immediately disappears! Help!

By: Tammy Plotner

Tammy Plotner — Mon, 05 May 2008 12:50:15 +0000

howdy, don!

i erased and redid everything this morning and it seems to be working fine from this end. why not try again? it may have been a fluke of the moment…

By: Don

Don — Fri, 02 May 2008 23:10:00 +0000

When I tried to run the 4D Ionosphere tutorial, I got this error:

Couldn't open the file "Ionosphere_WebShort_320×240.mp4" because an unknown error occurred. The number of the error is: -8971.

Help!

By: Ian O'Neill

Ian O'Neill — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:15:59 +0000

Hey that's an idea Tammy… I'm not totally familiar with the effects of meteors on the ionosphere. Would this be a large-scale global effect? It might well be picked up by Google Earth! That would be fun. Fancy a virtual ionosphere observing campaign??? I think you're on to something here!

Cheers, Ian

By: Tammy Plotner

Tammy Plotner — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:49:36 +0000

Very impressive article, Ian… And you're right – there's some very interesting applications out there just waiting to be explored.

Perhaps it would be fun if we both monitored some time during a meteor shower? Ham radio operators use the ionic meteor scatter to bounce signals further, so I'm thinkin' this might actually show! Your comments on aurora are also very viable…

One thing is for sure, I've just sat here like Pavlov's dog for the last couple of hours!

…vag? sorry, i was totally away from the internet to attend NEAF. during that time, Nova Sgr went downhill and we're back to just an ordinary little star in the midst of many. like most events, it's there – and then gone.

By: Ian O'Neill

Ian O'Neill — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:26:32 +0000

I've come across data sets of ionospheric electron density before and there are a lot of black patches. It's not down to covering up secrets, it's more a lack of data. I'm actually surprised that we have global coverage of ionospheric electron content at all. Will keep you posted if I find out any more

By: tourmaline

tourmaline — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:09:49 +0000

More censored black patches! More unrevealable secrets!

By: alphonso richardson

alphonso richardson — Thu, 01 May 2008 07:18:06 +0000

Well, that's interesting. Too bad I'm still one of the peasants still on a dial-up & so, the magnificence of this development will be forever lost to me (well, until I decide to get broadband….)

By: vag

vag — Thu, 01 May 2008 04:32:30 +0000

Hey! What happened to the nova in Sagittarius? I've been looking everywhere but cant fine any new info