The new ionospheric station of Tucumán: first results

An Advanced Ionospheric Sounder, built at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Rome, Italy, was installed at Tucumán, Argentina, particularly interesting for its location, near the southern peak of the ionospheric equatorial anomaly. The aim of this installation is to collect a large number of continuous data useful both to study the dynamics of the equatorial ionospheric plasma and to develop reliable regional ionospheric prediction models. Moreover this ionosonde will contribute to the ionospheric database and real time knowledge of Southern Hemisphere ionospheric conditions for space weather applications. The ionosonde is completely programmable and two PCs support the data acquisition, control, storage and on-line processing. In this work the first results, in terms of ionograms and autoscaled characteristics, are presented and briefly discussed.Fil: Pezzopane, Michael. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia; ItaliaFil: Zuccheretti, Enrico. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia; ItaliaFil: Bianchi, Cesidio. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia; ItaliaFil: Scotto, Carlo. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia; ItaliaFil: Zolesi, Bruno. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia; ItaliaFil: Cabrera, Miguel Angel. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional Tucumán. Departamento de Ciencias Básicas; ArgentinaFil: Ezquer, Rodolfo Gerardo. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Tecnología. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Ionósfera; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán; Argentin