Earth’s ionosphere. Courtesy/NASANIST News:
Two years ago, I had never heard of the WWVB radio station. Today, it’s one of my favorites, but that’s not because it broadcasts a pleasant mix of Top 40 hits. (It doesn’t.)
WWVB is a low-frequency station, operated by NIST, that provides precise time information to radio-controlled clocks across North America. The WWVB signal is sent from a transmitter in Fort Collins, Colorado, on a carrier frequency of 60 kilohertz (kHz). The devices that use WWVB interpret the digital time code transmitted by the station to stay in sync with NIST’s atomic clocks in Boulder, Colorado.
While atomic clocks are fascinating, and WWVB provides a vital service, I’m only interested in the amplitude, or strength, of its signal. You see, I am part of a team of researchers organizing the EclipseMob experiment, and WWVB is our key to understanding how the ionosphere changes during a solar eclipse—and what that means for radio communications.
