Etna Radio Observatory
ETNA RADIO OBSERVATORY
Live data from NICOLOSI (CT), Etna Park, Sicily
Maintained by Rosario Catania - Alessandro Longo - S. Caffo

(To see on google map click this link http://g.co/maps/73ffv  (Lat. 37°37'52.45"N - Long. 15°1'20.26"E)





This monitoring station is placed in the Etna Park that extends from the summit of the volcano to the towns surrounding it. Beautiful not only for its eruptions and for its lava flows, but also for the unique environment surrounding it, rich in sounds, perfumes, and colors. An enchanting landscape protected by a park you cannot miss the opportunity to visit if you are in Sicily.


System 1: INDUCTION COIL

Realized with 14 km of 0.22 mm enamelled copper wire (about 5 kg) wrapped on a high permeability core, made by 130 insulated iron rods 0.6 cm thikness and 2 meters long, for a total weight of 120 kg (!).
A low noise preamplifier, made with an OP27 frontend as an unbalanced differential amplifier, supplies the needed amplification to drive the sound card line input directly. Power comes from a local battery recharged by a solar panel.




ELF and ULF MAGNETIC FIELD

Here below the first LIVE spectrogram, updated every hour. It shows the last 8 hours ELF and ULF activity, as received by our coil  (magnetic field).
    

     
Schumann resonances are marked in right side of the picture. Bottom part zooms on the 0,1 to 4 Hz range.
FFT resolution 10,5 mHz, scroll time 40 seconds.


Following the same signal, in 1 hour strips. Picture updated every hour
   
This is the frequency range of schumann resonances, and a zone of deep interest to us, for the study of possible interaction of magmatic flow with the terrestrial magnetic field. FFT resolution 168 mHz, scroll time 4.6 seconds.

 
Last spectrogram coming from coil shows daily strips, useful to compare activity from day to day, and to find anomalies. Picture updated every hour.
  

   
Scroll time 109 seconds and FFT resolution 10,5 mHz.



System 2: ORTHOGONAL LOOP

IdealLoop H301 system: http://www.vlf.it/feletti2/idealloop.html . Compact loop to receive VLF from 8 Hz to 20 kHz, with two 50 x 50 cm squared orthogonal loops.




RDF low freqeuncy magnetic field. Color indicates signals incoming direction.

  
Scroll time 11188 mS , FFT resolution 84 mHz.

And by the same reception system, the hourly multi strips:
  
Scroll time 4600 mS , FFT resolution 168 mHz.

RDF VLF magnetic field:
 
Scroll time 11 sec FFT resolution 91 mHz. Signal pre-filtered with Paul Nicholson's filter to reduce the hum noise.

System 3: GEOPHONE

Geophone Multistrip hourly representation, useful for local seismic and vulcanic events correlation:

Scroll time 4.6 sec, updated every hour. 

Here below the real time situation about lighting strikes in Europe. Courtesy of http://www.blitzortung.org/

Unattended operations, signal conditioning, spectrograms and RDF functions are performed with SpectrumLab: http://www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/ . Many thanks to Wolfgang Buscher for his support.
Automatic FTP process realized with SincBack: http://www.2brightsparks.com/

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