Collaborative Research: Maintenance, Operations and Data Analysis of Arecibo and Millstone Hill Interferometers

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This project supports the operation and maintenance of four Fabry-Perot Doppler Imagers, two at the Millstone Hill Observatory in Massachusetts and two at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. These instruments provide data on the behavior of the neutral components of the Earth's thermosphere, and contribute to studies of interactions among the Earth's ionosphere and thermosphere in response to solar forcing as a system. This will address the distribution of energy and momentum throughout different latitudes and layers of the atmosphere. Data and operation will be centralized through a client-server architecture that allows for remote operation, data collection and automated analysis. Data will continue to be published to the web and Madrigal database daily, within hours of observation. The project will provide educational opportunities for undergraduate students through collaborations. SSI is pursuing non-traditional educational opportunities to educate the public about space science and optics in general. The ASTRA team will use the Millstone Hill and Arecibo data to investigate the magnitude, occurrence rate and variability of the midnight temperature maximum (MTM), and the annual and semiannual variability of the upper thermosphere. These results will be compared with TIMEGCM model output. Thermospheric vertical winds will be measured at each location using two different techniques, a direct line-of-sight technique and the Burnside technique where vertical winds are inferred from the horizontal wind gradient. When available these vertical winds will be compared to vertical motion measured by the incoherent scatter radars at each location. These observations allow for the inter-comparison and verification of the veracity of different measurement techniques and will ultimately allow for a better understanding of the 3-d dynamics of the thermosphere.