reply to post by defcon5
Thanks for all your interest.
At
Meteorscan we detect returned radar signals from meteor trails. The straight line of “spikes” that you are referring to are the DIRECT
radar “blips” coming from our radar source in France.
When you see a continuous line on our screens it is due to
Tropospheric Ducting ("
Tropo" or "
Ducting" for short) caused by
temperature inversion low down in Earth's atmosphere. Where warmer and colder layers meet, a "duct" will be formed where radio waves
(typically VHF and UHF) are "piped" along the duct where they escape many hundreds - or thousands - of miles away. Foggy conditions (which are also
caused by temperature inversion) are often a good indication of this happening.
So, this is an unwanted direct signal from our Radar Source in France, caused by Tropospheric Propagation.
Try out our MultiScreen:
www.merriott-astro.co.uk...
We normally don't have these lines of “spikes” because the radar is out of sight over the horizon, but during Tropospheric weather conditions the
radar signal is trapped and follows the curvature of the Earth to reach us as a direct signal, which is actually what we don’t want!
Think of it as the radio waves are acting like a mirage – like when you can “see” over the horizon.
Approximately, our Radar Area covers England, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, West Germany.
The blue baseline is the normal, ever present, natural, background radiation, part of which is the
Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
(
CMBR) from the
Big Bang 13.7 Billion Years ago!
To see how our normal meteor detections look, visit here (the blogger is one of our Team):
www.g7fek.co.uk...
Thanks for your interest.
Incidentally, we also detect
Space Junk, the
International Space Station (
ISS), other
Satellites,
The Moon,
Lightning Strikes.
I shall try and upload some images now for you. Here's hoping (first time).
Nope - Silly Blogsite - won't let me upload images. What a bunch of Dummies!
Iain.
Meteorscan Team
www.meteorscan.com...
www.normanlockyer.com...
edit on 15-11-2012 by METEORSCAN because: Additional Information