Comparing solar data

Last week, we reported on a spectacular solar event that we caught with KAIRA. As it turned out, the LOFAR station in England (UK608 Chilbolton) also caught the event, although only part of it.

Today, we have the data for the event as seen from both stations. Although we have a lot more KAIRA data, we have clipped it to make it match the same time range as the UK608 data.

Although very similar, there are some differences between the two stations. KAIRA's layout (REF) is different to that of the layout of UK608 (REF) and the UK station has twice the number of aerials. At the time of the measurement some of the KAIRA aerials were still out of action, due to the storm damage.

The stations are also at a different latitudes/longitudes. Therefore the relative topocentric position of the sun with respect to the two arrays is different. Certainly at KAIRA, the sun is lower in the sky. This also affects the relative position with respect to the polarisation orientation of the aerials (although the sun is largely unpolarised, the aerials do have a different response as we are only using one dipole for these measurements).

Finally, the radio-frequency interference (RFI) environments are slightly different between the two stations.