IITC Newsletter Vol 1 No 1 : 10 June 2001 (Corrected) ===================================================== All... Welcome to the first of what we hope will be a series of communications among members of the International Ionospheric Tomography Community (or whatever name we decide to take on). The primary purpose of this first note is to make sure that everyone receiving it wants to be included in future communications and, conversely, to make sure that we've included everyone who should be included. I would ask everyone receiving this note to review the list of individuals to whom it was sent to make sure we've not forgotten any individual or group who should be included. If you believe some individual or group should be added, please send names and e-mail addresses to Jim Secan at and he'll add them on. If you wish to be removed from the list, also notify Jim and your name will be removed. The second purpose of this note is to address some issues that came up at our working session in Boston on 5 June and to bring everyone up to date on where matters stand. 1. NIMS status. Hopefully you already have received the news from Ed Fremouw that a Memorandum of Understanding is being drafted between the U.S. Air Force and Navy to continue funding operation of the NIMS satellites. 2. First Tomographic World Day. As we decided, the first day on which we will all attempt to have as many of our respective tomographic arrays functioning as possible will be the World Day in September closest to the equinox. According to the International Geophysical Calendar for 2001, that day will be 19 September (a Priority Regular World Day). The next day (20 September) is a Regular World Day, so we'll try to collect on that day as well. The 19th is also a Dark Moon Geophysical Day. We did not decide what to do after that observing period, but I believe we should all at least provide to some central clearing house a summary of passes collected during that UT period. NWRA/Tucson will serve as such a clearing house for now, so please send a summary to me at ( jim@nwra-az.com ) as soon as you can after 23 September 2001. I'll try to put together a summary of what everyone provides and will post it on my web site. My notes say that Len Kersley is to select the next date, and that it is to be some time in northern-hemisphere winter. 3. Tomographic Workshop. Gary Bust (Univ. of Texas ARL) proposed that we have a one- or two-day workshop in conjunction with the upcoming joint AGU-EGS meeting in Nice. Unfortunately, we were a year off regarding when this meeting will happen. The joint meeting is not until 2003. A few of us noted this during the space weather meeting that followed the beacon symposium and felt that waiting until 2003 was not a good idea. We do, however, need to come up with a date and location for this meeting. Any suggestions? Something for us all to think about in the future is whether we want to try to decide as a group on a single (or as few as possible) formats for data and image exchange. We (NWRA) presently use a simple netCDF (network Common Data Format) format for our data, and I believe that the UT:ARL group may also use this format. Our images are, at present, in a simple binary file, but we have plans to convert those to netCDF as well. It is not a critical issue, but if we can settle on a small number of easily portable data-file formats now, it will make future work such as data sharing or even an international database of tomography records and images much easier. (Information on netCDF format can be found at: .) It was exciting to see all the good work being done in this now-mature field at the beacon symposium. As Len Kersley so rightly pointed out, it's time for us to stop focusing on the limitations of tomography and to begin demonstrating the many benefits and potentialities of this new tool for ionospheric research. Jim Secan and Ed Fremouw