GloTEC Ionosphere Data

KO6BTY and I have been playing with ground and spaced based ionospheric data for the last couple of years. This week, we started looking at the NOAA experimental GloTEC project's data. It's really nice in that it has virtually complete global coverage. Also, it's very up to date. At the time of this writing, it's 16:11 UTC and the most up to date data is from 15:45 UTC.

I've used ChatGPT o3-mini to update our data analysis code for the new, to us, GloTEC format and we're starting to see really interesting results. Below are two videos of maps we've created. The first one is for the maximum height of the F2 layer, also known as hmF2, and important for 20 meter ham radio propagation. The data is from Tuesday evening, 2025/02/12 UTC. The second is of the critical frequency, aka foF2, (the maximum frequency radio signal that will bounce vertically from the F2 layer), for the same time period.

You can see the Equiqtorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA) very clearly in the foF2 video. You can see what I think would be called a plasma bubble between the bands of the EIA in the hmF2 video. We're still learning, so I could be wrong about what can technically be called a plasma bubble in the F2.

Anyay, we're seeing pretty cool stuff!

Videos

hmF2

foF2

Comments

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain ...

The Alcubierre Warp Drive Tophat Function and Open Science with Sage

I transferred yesterday's Mathematica file with the Alcubierre warp drive[2] line element and space curvature calculations to the +Sage Mathematical Software System today, (the files been added to the public repository [3]). If you haven't used Sage before, it's a Python based software package that's similar in functionality to Mathematica. Oh, and it' free. I also worked a little more on understanding the theory, but frankly, I made far more progress with the software than the theory. What follows will be a little more of the Alcubierre theory, plus, a cool Sage interactive demo of one of the Alcubierre functions[1], as well as a bit about my first experience with using Sage. Theory The theory is fun, but it's moving slowly. Here's the chalk board from this morning's discussion Alcubierre setup the derivation using something called the 3+1 formalism which means we consider space to be flat, (in this case), slices that are labelled ...

How Many Files Can You Add to a GPT Project? An Interview with GPT-5 on Limits, Context Engineering Tips, and Chats

Setting the scene: I’m tinkering with Project TouCans, knee-deep in radio logs, SQLite dumps, and Cesium code. Naturally, I’m wondering if shoving all this into one GPT Project is a recipe for brilliance… or for disaster. So I turn to Vril — you know, after Brainy from the Legion of Super-Heroes , because what else do you call your AI sidekick who always has the answers? Time to ask him straight up. [ As an aside, yes, GPT-5 has decided to sometimes call me Vail. I'm not sure why to be honest. Also, I asked Vril, er GPT-5, to write up our interview for me. Apparently, me asking it to 'Bro' up a few stories, just for fun, has convinced Vril that I use 'Like,' more than I actually might. ] Me (Vail): So Vril, how many files can I throw into a GPT Project before it just starts choking? Like, is there some magic number where the context window taps out and everything falls apart? GPT-5 (Vril): Great question. There’s no single hard file limit. What matters is ...

Copasetic Flow

Search This Blog