A particular type of scientific radar system has been developed and used over the past few decades which is capable of measuring the Doppler motion of the plasma in the ionosphere over a large region of Earth's polar regions. A network of these types of radars known as the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) is operated by an international collaboration of scientists.

Recently a new capability was developed in which two SuperDARN radars operated in a bistatic manner, that is, signals transmitted from one radar propagated through the ionosphere and were received and analyzed by another radar located over 1000 km away. During bistatic operations conducted with SuperDARN radars located in Oregon and Kansas during recent campaigns, several distinct modes
of propagation were observed.

In this talk professor Shepherd will describe the basics of the radars he operates for his research, focusing on the recent bistatic capability he helped develop and how this research is incorporated into the classes that he teaches at Thayer.