The Northern Lights occur within the ionosphere, the layer of charged particles (electrons and ions) between 30 and 600 miles above the Earth’s surface. This layer is a tricky challenge for GPS navigation systems: it slows down and bends radio waves passing through it, forcing GPS devices to correct for it.
Josh Semeter, a Professor at Boston University’s College of Engineering studies how the GPS signals on your smartphone contain valuable information about the plasma environment that envelopes our planet. To learn more about how you can mobilize your smartphone to contribute to ionospheric research, visit SemeterLab.com.
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