The THEMIS Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) team has established ten ground-based magnetometer stations. The network of these teachers, students, and magnetometers together with other students who participate using the web is called the Geomagnetic Event Observation Network by Students (GEONS).

The West Campus of BMCC is one of these sites. A magnetometer is buried in the woods across from the Amik building. This unit can be thought of as a "Northern Lights" detector. When you see red in the graph below, it very likely means a solar storm has been detected. Blue represent quietness. This site picks up very little residual "noise" so expect to see some nice deep blue colors during times of little solar activity.

Magnetometers can be very sensitive devices. We suspect the device here can detect an ore boat passing nearby on Lake Superior. They are known to detect trucks that pass by if they are put too close to a highway. Tree root "noise" can be detected when trees sway in a very strong wind. This is an amazing device.

Chances are if you own a smart phone, you have a miniture version of a magnetometer built inside. That is how your phone knows which way is magnetic north. Some smart phones even have a "metal detector" app you can download and play with.

There is more information on how to read these graphs (and much more) at this link. Thank you, Berkeley for providing this unit to us and for processing the data that comes from it.