New Interplanetary Scintillation Telescope Array in China for Space Weather

Abstract

Interplanetary Scintillation (IPS) is a useful ground-based method to investigate solar wind structure and its parameters through the scintillation of distant, compact radio sources at radio wavelengths. Current worldwide IPS facilities include both single-site systems (which are typically a large telescope or array), and multi-site systems (which are typically more varied telescope/array sizes). To combine the advantages of both of these system types, we propose a new design for the IPS telescope in China, implementing a large collecting area at one main site, with smaller collecting areas at the other sites. This new IPS telescope concept is a part of the Phase-II Meridian Space Weather Monitoring Project under the 2016-2020 National Infrastructure Program in China to be constructed in near future. Some specifications and basic considerations of this telescope are described in this paper.

Progress Report of Mingantu Observing Station of NSSC

“…Yihua Yan (1,2,3) (1) National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; yanyihua@nssc.ac.cn (2) National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; yyh@nao.cas.cn…”

“…During 2014-2019, about 94 solar radio burst events have been registered by MUSER. Recently, MUSER also records some new events.The project to extend MUSER to 40-400 MHz frequency regime with 224 log-periodic dipole antennas and construction of a new 3-site Interplanetary Scintillation (IPS) telescope[2] with the main site having three 140 m by 40m cylinder antennas at Mingantu Observing Base and 2 sub-sites having 30 m parabolic antennas ~200 km apart have been approved and are under construction due to complete this year. Figure1shows the MUSER arrays and buildings at Mingantu Observing base, Inner Mongolia of China.…”

Interplanetary scintillation observation and space weather modelling

“…Now, the ISEE IPS array consisting of Toyokawa, Kiso, and Fuji stations is the only operational multi-station IPS facility. In addition, a brand-new three-site IPS-dedicated system in northern China is expected to be constructed in the late 2023 and calibrated afterwards, supported by the mega-framework of the Meridian Space Weather Monitoring Project in China (Yan et al, 2018).…”

A Pilot Study of Interplanetary Scintillation with FAST

“…The two facilities are both based on a parabolic cylinder design using a central observing frequency of 327 MHz. Since observations of IPS are an effective way to study heliospehric physics, some new facilities for IPS studies have been built or are going to be built, like the Mexican Array Radio Telescope (MEXART) (Mejia-Ambriz et al 2010;Chang et al 2016) in Mexico, and a new IPS telescope system to be constructed in Inner Mongolia, China, which is an array with three 140*40 m cylinder antennas at Mingantu, together with two 16 m parabolic antennas at Abaga and Keshiketeng (Yan et al 2018). Furthermore, other radio telescopes, like the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) (Kaplan et al 2015), Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) (Fallows et al 2013), and Square Kilometre Array (SKA) (Nakariakov et al 2015;Nindos et al 2019) have also adopted IPS investigations as one of their scientific goals.…”

“…This IPS facility aimed to obtain the solar wind velocity and scintillation index information for space weather forecasting (Zhu et al 2012). In the near future, an IPS facility will be built in Inner Mongolia for the National Meridian Project 2 (Yan et al 2018), which is a three-station system with observing frequencies centered at 327 MHz, 654 MHz, and 1.4 GHz.…”