Inaugurated the new Ionospheric Observatory in Argentina, in Bahia Blanca, province of Buenos Aires, equipped with an ionosonde called AIS-INGV, developed in the laboratories of the Roma2 section of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).
Thus begins, thanks to the collaboration between the University of Bahia Blanca, INGV and its spin-off SpacEarth, the experimental activity in a new Ionospheric Observatory in Argentina.
INGV has been collaborating with the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional Facultad Regional of Tucumán (UTN-FRT) since 2006, with the installation of a first AIS-INGV ionosonde in Tucumán already the following year. Since 2013, the collaboration has also extended to the Facultad Regional de Bahia Blanca (UTN-FRBB) and the commitment of all parties has led to the current result.
"The inauguration ceremony, complete with the cutting of the white and blue ribbon", says Bruno Zolesi, research associate of INGV, who took part in the inauguration ceremony, "was attended by the mayor of Bahia, the director of the National and other major local authorities. On the Italian side, the consul general of Italy, the new scientific attaché of the embassy Jose M. Kenny and former science attaché Gabriele Paparo.
The contribution of INGV and, in particular, that of the ionospheric group of the Roma2 Section in achieving this first important result was greatly appreciated and underlined by all the participants in the event".
The ionosphere is that part of the atmosphere between 50 and about 1000 km above the ground where free electrons influence the propagation of electromagnetic waves in the HF band. Furthermore, even the GPS signals (satellite signals for radio positioning with a much higher frequency than the HF band) which pass through it can be altered by the presence of inhomogeneities in the ionosphere itself. The ionosphere is characterized by a density of free electrons which depends on various factors such as altitude, season, time of day, solar activity, the knowledge of which is of primary importance for various disciplines, first of all space meteorology ( space weather). Ionospheric studies have the dual purpose of making a part of the Earth-Sun environment in which we live and work better known and, at the same time, help to better exploit the properties of this medium in its interaction with electromagnetic waves. The characteristics of the ionosphere are extremely interesting in the equatorial zones where the ionospheric dynamics is particularly important. Ionospheric observatories in these areas allow measurements with different characteristics than those obtained in Italian ionospheric observatories (middle latitudes). Hence the collaboration between Italy and Argentina for the installation of an observatory in San Miguel de Tucumán, located just below the equator, at about 26° south latitude. The limited presence of observatories providing real-time public data in Latin America has therefore stimulated the creation of a second inospheric observatory in Bahia Blanca. In both cases, INGV supplied the measuring instrument (ionosobe) covered by an Italian patent in 2004 and called AIS-INGV. The ionosonde is the most common instrument for studying the ionosphere from the ground. It is an HF radar capable of determining the position of the ionospheric regions and their evolution. It consists of a signal transmission, reception and analysis system and a pair of large antennas (40m x 25m) through which the radio frequency signal is sent vertically into the ionosphere and received once reflected.
The instrument performs measurements 24 hours a day with data processing in real time visible to the link:
