DIY geomagnetic storm monitoring
With the recent increase in solar storm activity, Alexander Avtanski bring our attention to his DIY magnetometer project.
The activity of the Sun varies on a cycle with a period of approximately 11 years. Periods of low solar activity are followed by a few years of sharply increased number of solar spots, flares, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), disrupting Earth’s magnetic field and causing magnetic storms. With the next Solar cycle maximum approaching I wanted to get on the fun too, so I set to build my own device for detecting and recording those magnetic storms, a.k.a. a magnetometer.
The magnetometer is of a torsion design, and the circuit uses an NTE987 op amp and a PIC16F688 in what is termed the data logger.
Alexander reports that the CME caused quite a stir in the Earth’s magnetic field at his California location. Check here for a real-time display of the data from Alexander’s magnetometer.
This is an advanced project which requires greater mechanical dexterity and precision than most DIY endeavors. With the disturbances in the earth’s magnetic field occurring lately, it looks with a worthwhile project for makers with the requisite skills.
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This entry was posted in DIY, measurement, open source and tagged geomagnetic monitoring, solar.
Comments
It’s neat to see a modern design based on a classic torsion pendulum. I did not see a vertical scale on the plots, was there any attempt to do a calibration? I’m wondering how sensitivity compares with a fluxgate magnetometer (but picking up the neighbor’s fridge door suggests it’s pretty good). A fluxgate might be less sensitive to mechanical disturbance. FWIW, here is a description of a fluxgate I did (a LONG time ago): http://www.bealecorner.org/best/measure/fluxgate/index.html
I could see magnetic field changes of about 20 gammas. 1 gamma = 1 nT = 1E-9 T (tesla) = 1E-5 Gauss. DC component of Earth’s field: 0.5 gauss = 50,000 gamma