Eclipse
Ok, kind of a late entry, but as you all know if you read my journal, there was a partial solar eclipse today.
Florida only got 20% coverage so there really wasn't much to see. I would imagine that if you had the right equipment you would see a little slither of the sun being blocked out by the moon.
This got me to thinking.
If the moon were blocking out a portion of light that is hitting our fair planet, would it not block the onslaught of radiation that is constantly pummeling the earth as well?
Well the curiosity got the better of me so I raced home from work and set up my solar flare monitoring equipment to see what effects this eclipse would have on our ionosphere.
I was VERY surprised to see that it was detectable. Please review the resulting chart below.
As you can see there is a sharp signal drop around the time the eclipse was happening, as well as a sharp increase when the event was over. However I am not sure what the sharp spike in the middle is all about. I would imagine it might be something similar to the diamond ring effect when visually observing a solar eclipse.
Florida only got 20% coverage so there really wasn't much to see. I would imagine that if you had the right equipment you would see a little slither of the sun being blocked out by the moon.
This got me to thinking.
If the moon were blocking out a portion of light that is hitting our fair planet, would it not block the onslaught of radiation that is constantly pummeling the earth as well?
Well the curiosity got the better of me so I raced home from work and set up my solar flare monitoring equipment to see what effects this eclipse would have on our ionosphere.
I was VERY surprised to see that it was detectable. Please review the resulting chart below.
As you can see there is a sharp signal drop around the time the eclipse was happening, as well as a sharp increase when the event was over. However I am not sure what the sharp spike in the middle is all about. I would imagine it might be something similar to the diamond ring effect when visually observing a solar eclipse.