FOTOS DE KEN BOWLES

Photos from Jicamarca Radar Observatory 1959 – 1970

This page last modified on 18 August, 2003

Jicamarca Radar Observatory (JRO) is located in a normally dry gulch (quebrada in Spanish) about 20 km east of Lima, Peru. The original purpose of the radar was to measure the density of the ionized upper atmosphere over the magnetic equator which passes close to Lima. I was director, from 1959 until 1964, of a U.S. funded project which built and then operated JRO, with a lot of cooperation from the Instituto Geofisico del Peru (IGP). Although I switched to computer science starting in 1968, JRO has continued to operate with participation of scientists from many countries. Those currently participating, especially the IGP staff, will shortly hold a 40-th (more or less) anniversary celebration involving many folks who helped to establish JRO.

This section is directed mainly to people who worked at JRO in the 1959 – 1970 period, to current participants, and to people who otherwise have some interest in the forthcoming anniversary celebration.

The photos posted on this website and CD-Rom are by (or supplied by) several contributors:

Ben Balsley – A mixture of 35mm slides, and prints. 1962 until after 1970.
Gerard Ochs (a.k.a. “Gerry”) – 35mm slides and prints, mostly during the 1960 – 1962 antenna array construction period.
Jorge Heraud, Gerardo Vera, and Ron Woodman – Collection of prints (digitally scanned) from papers they had saved, or found in the IGP archives.
Wil Klemperer – A few scanned images from prints he found in saved papers.
George Sugar – A few 35mm slides showing instrumentation built in Boulder for use at JRO, and views from a visit he made to JRO in 1967.
Granger Morgan – Sample from scanned 35mm slides that he took during our visit to JRO in early 1966.
My own – mostly from 35mm slides that I took while at JRO. In fact, I took most of them while on a brief visit in early 1966 using Kodachrome film. I took a large number of photos while in residence there from 1960 until 1964, and a small number during our site surveys in late 1959. Lamentably, most of my photos from that period are no longer of any use. They were on Ektachrome which deteriorated so badly that I threw many of them away sometime in the mid 1980’s. (Others who also used Ektachrome have discovered the same in their slides!)
My own – a few scans of photos found in relevant publications.
There are brief descriptive “Notes” associated with most photos in this set. I’ve indicated which photos are of uncertain origin in these Notes, and would appreciate it if anyone who recognizes these could let me know who took them, and if possible when. (3 months after most of these photos have been posted online on the Internet, I’ve had very few reactions to these questions. If you have the CD-Rom version, and find errors or answers to my questions, please let me know – bowlesk@att.net).

The format I’m using to present these photos is one I’ve evolved primarily for “slideshow” presentations from CD-Rom. Display software should be a reasonably recent Internet Web browser. I’m assuming that your browser version is at least 4. The Index files are based on small JavaScript programs designed to facilitate single-click stepping from photo to photo.

I’ve tested and found this presentation format works on Windows95, 98, … systems.
Using Macintosh MacOS 8 or later, running either Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, the content may be browsed from the Internet – but generally not from the CD-Rom. (The Macintosh mangles long filenames in directories obtained from a CD-Rom developed for Windows! Apparently the only way to solve this is to reduce all filenames to 8 characters or less. Could be done, but I haven’t had the time to do this and test.)
The opening page is a menu, asking that you select the screen size on which you wish to display the photos. If you have a 1024×768 (XGA) screen, you can use all three menu choices. If you have a 800×600 (SVGA) screen, choose SVGA or VGA. The VGA menu is just a list of simple links pointing to photos that will fill a 640×480 (VGA) screen. You may find that you can use the VGA menu as a fast way to display a particular photo – since all of the descriptions of individual photos are listed there. (Having found the desired photo in the VGA list, which is organized into sections, go to the XGA menu and select that section in the Index if you have an XGA screen.)

Saludos … Ken Bowles