© Juneau Empire
People travel north from all over for a chance to see the aurora. Soon, Chris Fallen will make his own.
Sometime around the darkness of the Sept. 19 new moon, the space physicist will travel to an antenna field off the Copper River.
There, he will pulse transmitters on and off to create radio-induced aurora, also known as airglow. The UAF researcher will use the HAARP facility to attempt to do from below what the sun does from above to create a display of aurora."Energetic electrons ionize and excite gases in the upper atmosphere," he said. "They release photons when they de-excite again. Here, we're doing the process from below with HF radio waves."
The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program is a group of high-frequency radio transmitters powered by four diesel tugboat generators and one from a locomotive. Using an extensive field of antennae, the transmitters send a focused beam of radio-wave energy into the aurora zone. There, that energy can stimulate a speck of the electrical Sun-Earth connection about 100 miles above our heads. UAF's Geophysical Institute, where Fallen works, took over operation of HAARP in 2015.
Comment: These sounds are similar to other bizarre sounds heard around the world. See: