Interplanetary and Ionosphere Scintillation Monitoring of Radio Sources Ensemble at the Solar Activity Minimum

Abstract

Results are presented of twenty-four-hour interplanetary and ionosphere scintillation monitoring obtained in Pushchino Radioastronomy Observatory during three observation series: between 18 November and 30 December 2006; between 11 June and 18 June 2007; between 20 October and 4 November 2008. Observations were carried out simultaneously in 16 beams of the radio telescope BSA LPI (Big Scanning Array of Lebedev Physical Institute) at the frequency 111 MHz. All the sources with scintillating flux greater than 0.2 Jy were recorded in the range of declination from +3° to +12°40 by observations in the years 2006, 2008 and from 21° to 28° in the year 2007. The values of radio source flux fluctuation temporal structure functions were measured at the temporal lags of 0.1 s, 1 s and 10 s, which characterize noise, interplanetary scintillations and ionosphere scintillations, respectively. About 1000 scintillating radio sources were observed every day. The number of sources N (σ _IPS≥σ _IPS,0) with scintillating flux σ _IPS greater than the given value σ _IPS,0 in the sky area with sizes 8° in declination and 0.5 hours in right ascension was used as the parameter describing turbulent interplanetary plasma. This parameter is shown to be proportional to the mean scintillation index of the radio source statistical ensemble in the given sky area. Similarly, the parameter N (σ _IONS≥σ _IONS,0) was introduced for a description of the turbulent ionosphere. The mean twenty-four-hour temporal dependence of the scintillation index is found. Weak day-to-day variations of the scintillation index were observed. In general, interplanetary plasma, as well as the ionosphere, was in a quiet state during the observation periods. Unusually a weak dependence of scintillation index on the position of the sources relative to the Sun was observed in the year 2008 at very deep solar activity minimum. Such a weak dependence is explained by a strong elongation of the turbulence level spatial distribution along the solar equatorial plane during a very deep minimum of solar activity.