Data taken between March 1-5, 1999 at NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center with the Mark 2 magnetometer by Dr. Sten Odenwald.
Solar conditions during this time: 3-1-99 Disturbed Bright Oval, with sub-storm over Greenland and Siberia 3-2-99 Quiet Sub-storm brightening over Sweden 3-3-99 Quiet Weak Oval, with sub-storm over Siberia 3-4-99 Quiet Weak Oval, sub-storm over Siberia 3-5-99 Quiet Weak Oval, sub-storm over SiberiaNote, the Quiet/Disturbed/Active index used at the Space Weather site is rather crude. In several instances a 'Quiet' condition was posted even though the 'Current View' image of the Earth from space by the POLAR satellite clearly showed the ring-shaped oval of auroral activity in progress over Alaska and Canada. In the next data runs I will indicate both the posted condition, and the strength of the 'auroral oval' on a scale B=Bright, W=weak and A=absent. In the following, all times are in local Eastern Standard Time. Data:
3-1-99 9:35 7.0 o slipage of mirror 10:10 7.0 o 10:30 7.0 s Auroral Oval, Day 60, 15:41 UT 11:00 6.0 s 14:20 4.0 s 15:05 4.0 s 15:35 4.0 s 16:00 3.0 s 17:00 4.0 s 3-2-99 9:30 6.0 s slipage of mirror card vertically...fixed 11:00 4.0 o 12:40 4.0 s 13:35 4.0 s Auroral Oval, Day 61, 16:10 UT 14:55 3.5 s 16:30 3.0 o 17:20 4.0 s 3-3-99 9:50 8.0 s 11:00 8.0 s 14:05 8.0 s Auroral Oval, Day 62, 19:50 UT 14:50 10.0 s approaching storm in Washington DC area 15:40 10.0 s 16:10 10.0 s 16:35 10.0 s 17:00 10.0 s 17:25 11.0 s 3-4-99 8:15 12.0 s 9:00 11.0 s Auroral Oval, Day 63 18:38 UT 11:40 9.0 s 13:25 8.0 s 13:55 7.0 s 15:05 6.5 s 16:00 6.0 s 17:15 6.0 s 3-5-99 9:40 8.0 s 10:30 6.5 s Auroral Oval, Day 64 16:24 UT 11:00 7.0 s 12:05 6.0 s 12:40 7.0 s 13:20 5.0 s 13:40 6.0 s 14:55 6.0 s 15:30 5.5 s 15:50 5.5 s 16:10 6.0 s 16:35 6.0 sNotes:
We finally fixed the slipage of the string that held the magnet sensor card inside the soda bottle so that this problem should not happen again. No resetting of the zero point was needed because the slipage was in the vertical direction and not along the horizontal direction of the spot scale on the wall. The storm that entered the Washington area after 5 PM EST was not an electrical storm, and it did not perturb the magnetometer readings the way the earlier storm did last month which caused large, continual oscillations in the spot position. The changes recorded on 3-3-99 could have been due to the magnetic sub-storm ( auroral) brightening seen from the satellite images on Day 62 which we show in the picture gallery below. There seemed to be auroral oval brightenings all week, so we will anxiously await a quieter week in the future to take some 'boring' data with no magnetic activity so that we can get a good baseline for quiet conditions.
We found the two 'real-time' magnetometer stations at CANOPUS system and Flinders very helpful in corroborating the data taken.
Notes:
We finally fixed the slipage of the string that held the magnet sensor card inside the soda bottle so that this problem should not happen again. No resetting of the zero point was needed because the slipage was in the vertical direction and not along the horizontal direction of the spot scale on the wall. The storm that entered the Washington area after 5 PM EST was not an electrical storm, and it did not perturb the magnetometer readings the way the earlier storm did last month which caused large, continual oscillations in the spot position. The changes recorded on 3-3-99 could have been due to the magnetic sub-storm ( auroral) brightening seen from the satellite images on Day 62 which we show We found the two 'real-time' magnetometer stations at Kiruna, Sweden system and Flinders very helpful in corroborating the data taken.