HF Doppler Studies of the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse

Continued study of the ionosphere, the critical boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space, is critical for understanding the entire coupled Geo space system. Variation in ionization in this region has wide-spread effects including influencing radio wave propagation, marking Ionospheric research as an interest not just to scientists, but also to Ham Radio Operators. The HamSCI collaboration combines the efforts of these two groups to improve ionospheric studies through instrumentation development and observation, and a recent target for HamSCI science was the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse. Surrounding totality, a brief disruption of ionization causes a change in propagation path length, resulting in a Doppler shift in the radio signal. Using observational data from a HamSCI GRAPE HF receiver, we examine the spectra for 9 different frequencies to determine the processes occurring in the ionosphere.