Observation of the Total Electron Content for 14- GPS stations in Malaysia during the Annular Eclipse of 15th of January 2010

The paper examines the Ionospheric response to the annular eclipse of the sun on January 15, 2010 over eastern and western Malaysia using GPS data measurement from 14- ground station in Malaysia. The GPS sensing technique employs two different approaches to verify the TEC depletion occurrence at the 14-stations. The first approach measures the TEC depletion parameters at the 14 GPS stations during the solar event. The second approach compares the TEC value with the quiet day TEC variation at one of the station 3-days before and 3-days after the solar eclipse event. The GPS observation indicates occurrence of TEC depression at 6 stations where the behaviour varying from one station to another. On the basis of the first and second measurement techniques, the range of TEC depletions at the six stations were 9 to 20 %, while for the other 8-stations 0.4 to 12% respectively. The measurement shows that TEC depression at most GPS stations began on the neck of the first contact of the solar eclipse followed by deeper depressions. This effect was as a result of the hiding of the optical rays during the solar eclipse which causes direct reduction in photo ionization; destroy the previous photo-chemical equilibrium and result in the depletion in electron density