Rainwater Observatory in French Camp has been selected among five other facilities around the country to participate in a research project studying low altitude aurora. The project involved the installation of an all sky research camera at the observatory.
The project is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation and headed up by Dr. Asti Bhatt, a research engineer at the Center for Geospace Studies, SRI International in Menlo, California.
Bhatt works to understand the physics of ionospheric plasma during auroral precipitation at high latitudes by using the SRI-operated Sondrestrom incoherent scatter radar facility in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. Studying aurora using both radio and optical techniques provides unique insights into the amount of energy deposited into the earth’s ionosphere during solar storms and resulting auroral precipitation.
Bhatt also studies global scale ionospheric processes that span continents-in particular, the propagation of large-scale waves in the ionosphere in response to forcing from solar or lower atmospheric events.
With fellow researcher Elizabeth Kendall, Bhatt has developed an all-sky imager to study ionospheric airglow and low-latitude aurora. They are currently working to create a network of these imagers across the continental U.S. in collaboration with rural high schools.
