Meeting Summaries

Public Presentations and Team Meetings of UNH SWUG

The University of New Hampshire Space Weather UnderGround is a very public effort to construct an array of ground-based magnetometers across northern New England. As such, we give public presentations at scientific and educational meetings in an effort to broadcast the program and recruit new members.

SWUG Team Meeting 9-17-2022

The Space Weather UnderGround held a team meeting in Morse Hall at the University of New Hampshire on September 17, 2022. Many schools were unable to attend, but we are making the material available to all here.

There were four speakers and their presentations are here:

Prof. Charles Smith welcomed the new schools and gave an overview of the project. The overview included early results, a description of the science of the solar wind and magnetosphere that leads to measurements by SWUG. This provided an introduction to the science that we hope to accomplish including the opportunities for students to get involved and problems we are wrestling with. His talk can be found here:

2022-09-17_SWUG_Team_Meet_Smith

Prof. Marc Lessard gave a more detailed overview of ionospheric physics. His talk will be available soon.

Prof. Harald Kucharek gave an overview of the deployment hardware that has been developed for SWUG. This hardware enables us to deploy the magnetometers away from buildings and human activity and thereby away from sources of magnetic contamination. The hardware includes PVC tubes so the magnetometers can be buried in the ground for thermal stability, photovoltaic arrays, batteries to power the magnetometers through the night, radio data links to send the data to the school buildings, and receivers that collect and record the data within the building for download to the SWUG Data Center. His talk can be found here:

2022-09-17_SWUG_Team_Meet_Kucharek

Scott Goelzer, a teacher at Coe-Brown Academy and one of the first schools to complete and deploy a SWUG magnetometer, described his design and construction of the "doghouse" that houses the batteries, photovoltaic array, and antenna for data transmission. This, or a design like it, is required to support the deployed magnetometer. It is placed fifteen to twenty feet from the magnetometer due to the magnetic nature of the batteries so as not to be source of magnetic contamination.

Goelzer_Doghouse_Construction_Report-v2.pdf

SWUG Presentations at NHSTA Meeting 10-27-2022

Chuck Smith and Scott Goelzer presented the Space Weather UnderGround at the October 2022 meeting of the New Hampshire Science Teachers Association. It was a general review of the program and invitation for schools to join in the effort.

Smith gave a scientific overview of the prject:

2022-10-27_NHSTA_UNH_SWUG_Smith

Goelzer gave a how-to presentation that included his personal experiences:

2022-10-27_NHSTA_SWUG_workshop_Goelzer.pdf