Observations of the Ionosphere Effects of the Solar Eclipse on July 22, 2009

For the first time, Langfang Medium-Frequency (MF) radar was used to simultaneously observe the ionospheric effects due to the solar total eclipse on July 22, 2009, with three GPS/TEC receivers operated at Wuhan, Jiaxing and Langfang respectively. Results show that during the solar eclipse, the D layer electron densities at 78km level observed by the MF radar decreased by 67% and the altitude level of equivalent electron densities of 200cm?3 uprising about 10 km. The ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC) observed by the GPS/TEC receivers in the above three sites respectively decreased about 1TECU. Their minimum reductions of the D layer electron densities and TEC are synchronous with the solar eclipse maximum phase. After the solar eclipse, a Traveling Ionospheric Disturbance (TID) was revealed with a period of larger than 2 h in the GPS/TEC data.