Geophysics instrumentation

JUL 01, 1967

AFCRL adapts instrumentation from the laboratory to studies of the earth’s atmospheric environment. Primary interest is in improved instrumentation for balloons, rockets and satellites.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3034400

John N. Howard

IN MANY WAYS geophysical experiments are like space research, requiring major logistic efforts and expensive vehicles to carry even a simple instrument to the remote and largely inaccessible environment. To the general public, geophysical studies seldom have the glamor or excitement of an experiment in space: our launches are seldom televised, and our successes (or failures) are chronicled in the drier pages of scientific journals. But to the geophysicist the research offers many challenges: there are still many mountains to be climbed and mysteries to be solved. Only after we better understand the physical mechanisms of our environment will we have any hope of controlling it. Then, perhaps, people will no longer say that everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.

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References

1. B. Szabo, chap. 1 in Handbook of Geophysics and Space Environments (S. Valley, ed.) McGraw‐Hill, New York (1965).
2. Appl. Opt., February (1967).
3. P. G. Forsyth, R. O. Hutchinson, AFCRL Instrumentation Papers, No. 105, AFCRL 66‐565 (Aug. 1966).
4. R. G. Walker, C. V. Cunniff, A. P. D’Agati, AFCRL, Environmental Research Papers, No. 223, AFCRL 66‐631, (Sept. 1966).
5. H. E. Hinteregger, pp. 34–95 in Space Astrophysics (W. Liller, ed.) McGraw‐Hill, New York (1961).
6. R. A. Skrivanek, H. Fechtig, Stern und Weltraum 5, 4 (1966).
7. T. Wirtanen, “Evaluation of the ANNA‐1 Satellite Optical Beacon,” AFCRL 63‐56 (1963).
8. G. R. Hunt, J. W. Salisbury, J. W. Reed, J. Geophys. Res. 72, 705 (1967).https://doi.org/JGREA2
9. See, for example, the introductory lecture “Solar Magnetographs” by J. W. Evans in Atti del Convegno sui Campi Magnetici Solari (G. Barbera, ed.) Firenze (1966). This paper also contains a full description of the Doppler Zeeman Analyzer.

More about the authors

John N. Howard, AFCRL.