lONOSPHERE RESEARCH

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30741, 4 May 1965, Page 6

lONOSPHERE RESEARCH

Papers Given In America Scientific papers on the ionosphere research work of the Geophysical Observatory. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, were given in American by Mr G. A. M. King of the observatory staff, who has just returned from overseas. Mr King’s visit was financed partly by the National Aeronautics and Snace Administration and partly bv the New Zealand Government. Mr King left Christchurch at the end of February and spent four weeks at the Institute of Geophvsics. University of Hawaii, where he worked with a group under Professor W. R. Steiger investigating relations between the ionosphere and the low-alti-tude red airglow, a very faint tropical aurora The group found that the airglow appeared to come from the recombination of oxygen ions. Mr King later presented a paper giving some of the findings at a symposium at Boulder. Colorado. The record’s of the institute’s observatory at Maui are of particular interest to Mr King's observatory because Maui in conjugate magnetically with the New Zealand station at Rarotonga—meaning that the two stations are at either end of a life of force of the earth's magnetic field. On the United States mainland, Mr King's first call was at the South-West Centre for Advanced Studies at Dallas. Texas, where he gave a paper on the work of his observatory. He studied the centre’s research project on the waves in the atmosphere which affect ionospheric behaviour. At the National Bureau of Standards at Boulder, where he stayed for 17 days, he held discussions with many scientists in his own field and gave papers on the red airglow and on New Zealand upperatmosphere and ionosphere work at a symposium on midlatitude auroral arcs and equatorial airglows. The paper which Mr King gave on New Zealand studies described work he had done in conjunction with Dr M. Gadsden, formerly of the Omakau auroral station and now of Boulder.

Tn Australia, Mr King visited geophysical laboratories in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.