The CEDAR 2020 annual face-to-face conference has been cancelled due to COVID-19, but a two-day virtual conference will take place June 22-26. It will include a National Science Foundation town hall, student workshop, pre-recorded presentations and individual workshops.

ICON results will be featured in its own data introduction and tutorial session and in several more of these workshops, including those focused on Thermospheric Winds, Model Systems Engineering and Coordinated Ground and Space-Based observations.   

The agenda for the CEDAR meeting is here.

The evolving list of workshops can be found here. http://cedarweb.vsp.ucar.edu/wiki/index.php/2020_Workshop:workshoplist

Register here at no cost to be included in the mailing list.

Just over six weeks after launch and early calibrations, NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission was presented with a unique opportunity. ICON flew very close to the December 26 solar eclipse track that extended across Asia, and observed the major changes in upper atmospheric airglow that naturally occurred. ICON’s four instruments, primed to look at the ionosphere, the dynamic region where Earth meets space, were in position to observe the effects. What happens when airglow –the natural glow of Earth’s atmosphere caused by solar radiation – is temporarily “turned off” when the sun is blocked by the moon’s shadow for a few minutes? Preliminary data shows that all four instruments – MIGHTI, EUV, FUV and IVM – were able to see changes the eclipse wrought.

On January 7, 2020, ICON first light images were featured as NASA Earth Observatory's "Image of the Day," in an article called "ICONic Views of the Ionosphere."

[NASA Feature by Lina Tran] In a Dec. 10 press event at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, three scientists presented new images of the ionosphere, the dynamic region where Earth’s atmosphere meets space. Home to astronauts and everyday technology like radio and GPS, the ionosphere constantly responds to changes from space above and Earth below.

The collection of images presented include the first images from NASA’s ICON, new science results from NASA’s GOLD, and observations of a fleeting, never-before-studied aurora. Together, they bring color to invisible processes that have widespread implications for the part of space that is closest to home.