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RADIO WAVES

From Observatories: University of Florida Radio Observatory

Live Data

University of Florida (real-time)

A complete list of real-time data links is located in the Space Weather Resources section.

The antenna is located in Florida, so keep in mind that you are only going to see activity when the Sun is up in the sky in Florida. A good time to observe would be between 10:00 am and 2:00pm local time in Florida,. So let us say you are in California, just subtract 3 hours + between 7:00 and 11:00 am would be a good time to observe the signal. Also, Florida has intense electric storms during the summer. To protect their equipment, the site is closed from June to late September.

After you click on University of Florida at the top of the page, you will see a page like this.

Screenshot of the Florida Observatory Website.

Ignore the Username and Password + they have been set for you. Click "Run". The page should now look something like the following image.

Screenshot of a data plot from the Florida Observatory Radio Telescope.

This plot looks pretty complicated because it shows the radio signal from several antennas at once. Each antenna is recording a different radio frequency. It is rather like listening to a radio that is bringing in several stations at once.

Please note that the times are in Universal Time (UT). For the Student Observation Network it is best to monitor the Radio JOVE signal that is geared towards listening to the Sun. That is the red graph at the bottom. You can set up the screen to make observing the Radio JOVE signal easier.

Across the top of the above image are two 'pull down' menus.

Screenshot of the two pull down menus.
  1. The first is 'Time Span'. When you click and 'pull down' that menu, you will have 6 options; 15 min, 75 min, 150 min, RJ15 min, RJ75 min, RJ 150 min. The 15, 75 and 150 min allow you to set the horizontal time axis to 15, 75 or 150 min and still show all the signals from all the different antennas. We recommend that you select one of the RJ (for Radio JOVE) settings + again the 15, 75 and 150 indicate how many minutes will be displayed.
  2. The second menu is the Refresh Rate. It lets you choose how often the graph is updated or 'refreshed'. When you first enter the page the Refresh Rate is off. Set your sec/each field to something compatible to the speed of your network connection. If you have a slow connection (i.e. dialup-modem), then your browser may not keep up with a high refresh rate (3 to 10 seconds), so set this field to a high number between 20 and 40 so that the image is refreshed every 20 or 40 seconds. If you have a fast connection (i.e. cable, DSL, or LAN), you can set this field to a lower number so that it refreshes the image more quickly.

IMPORTANT: You must click the 'Run' button after you make changes to the Time Span or Refresh Rate in order to initiate the changes. After you have set the menus as suggested you will see a graph similar to the one below.

Data plot from the Florida Observatory Radio Telescope

The sharp spikes in the above graph are usually due to man-made signals or lightening strikes. The number of spikes and the weather forecast for Florida on the day this graph was made is consistent with lightening. A solar storm would show a gradual rise and fall in the signal over several seconds to several minutes. The graph would look somewhat like a shark fin.

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