RECORDING CHANGES IN IONOSPHERE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27443, 1 September 1954, Page 5

RECORDING CHANGES IN IONOSPHERE

AUTOMATIC EQUIPMENT FOR RAROTONGA

Automatic equipment to record changes in the ionosphere is to replace the manual recorder on Rarotonga in the Cook Isalnds. A member of the Geophysical Observatory staff, Mr G A. M. King, will spend three months installing the apparatus. • Recordings of the continual daily and seasonal changes in the ionospheric region of the upper atmosphere were not only of great scientific importance, but were essential to the efficient planning and working of radio communication circuits, said the director of the Christchurch Geophysical Observatory (Mr J. W. Beagley). The behaviour of the ionosphere played an indispensable part in short-wave radio propagation, he said. As Dominion headquarters of ionospheric research, the Christchurch Observatory maintains and operates recording stations in Christchurch, Rarotonga and the Campbell Islands. During and before World War 11, recording was associated with the physics department at Canterbury University College. Near the end of the war Australian scientists made the automatic recorder which was installed at Fiji. After 1948, when this station closed, it operated at Christchurch as an auxiliary station. The photographed records of the equipment’s “soundings” will be added to readings from the automatic apparatus in Christchurch and the manual recorder on the Campbell Islands. The main radio predicting centres of the world, at Washington, Sydney and at Slough, England, as well as other organisations throughout the world will receive the information.