10 Mar 2010

Whistlers!

This evening the VLF natural noise receiver in Todmorden, UK is buzzing with whistlers in addition to the almost continuous stream of tweeks. Whistlers are audible frequency descending tones caused by the dispersion of a lightning triggered impulse as it travels along magnetic field lines. At the moment I'm hearing about one whistler every 2 minutes.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have just been listening to the
VLF natural noise receiver in Todmorden. I can hear some high pitched pinging sounds are these the Whitlers.

Tony

Anonymous said...

Whistlers not Whitlers.
Too much Whitlering lately

Roger G3XBM said...

No, these are tweeks. Whistlers are more slowly descending "swishes" or pure descending tones typically lasting 1-3 seconds. If you are very lucky, you may here a string of these with increasing rates of dispersion lasting up to a minute, although this would be rare.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for that Roger
I will lisen again for a longer period.

Tony