NASA-ARC Electron Densities Interpolated to 100-Km Intervals packed

Description

This data set, provided by the Ames Research Center, consists of electron density profiles for the ionosphere above the F2 maximum (topside ionosphere). The data are packed on binary magnetic tapes, written on an IBM 360 computer. An unpacking routine, called "tape," is available at NSSDC for this data set. These profiles were initially computed from digital values of frequency and virtual range that were scaled from ionograms. Digital electron density values are listed for the satellite location and for each 100 km from the satellite altitude down to the lowest height of topside signal reflections (normally near 300 km). These data are part of a collection prepared from the Alouette 2, ISIS 1, and ISIS 2 satellites. From all three satellites, there are 33,000 profiles for the period November 11, 1965, to June 7, 1972, from the vicinity of 18 different ground stations. These data are from a small block of the total ionogram data from the three satellites (less than 1%), but they form one of the largest blocks of reduced satellite ionograms available. These reductions are of optimum quality because extraordinary, ordinary, and Z-trace values were checked against one another during computation of the density values.