News

The volcanic eruption on Tonga shows the sensitivity of the earth's atmosphere and the interconnectedness around the globe. On Saturday, its explosion could be heard several thousand kilometers away, including in Australia and New Zealand. Although no acoustic signal was heard in Austria, the arrival of the pressure wave could still be measured. The pressure wave reached us with a delay of…

The Sonnblick Observatory is pleased to welcome a new colleague to its ranks. After a long, exciting tender, the decision was made in favor of Simon Feigl. Mr. Feigl originally comes from Steyr and can already look back on a great deal of international experience. After studying technical physics at Graz University of Technology, a stay at the CERN research center in Geneva followed, in parallel…

This morning (05.11.21) the technicians at the Sonnblick Observatory were able to photograph an exciting light phenomenon. This phenomenon is a light column, which is counted to the halo phenomena. Starting from the sun you can see a beam of light. This effect is usually observed more in the northern regions, near the Arctic. In the past, such phenomena were often interpreted as something…

The results of the study by Dr. Dušan Materić brought exciting results which were carried out as part of the "Transnational Access Program" of the EU project INTERACT (supported by the EU Horizon 2020 project INTERACT, grant agreement No. 730938). The aim of the NIRA (Nanoplastics In Remote Air: types, concentrations and size distribution) measurement campaign is to detect…

The events of September 26th, 2021 show how sensitive the measuring devices are at the Sonnblick Observatory. An increased dust mass concentration was detected in the early hours of the night and morning. After verification of the data (trajectories, negative exponent of the single scattering albedo), this event is Saharan dust. This can be seen very clearly in the graphic (dust mass…

The Brewer spectrophotometer is a sophisticated optical instrument. It allows near-simultaneous observations of total ozone column (TOC) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) between the instrument and the sun. It can also make high-resolution spectral measurements of ultraviolet (UV) radiation in the direct solar beam or across the entire sky. More than 25 years ago, the University of Natural Resources and…

In the framework of the "Transnational Access Program" of the EU project INTERACT (supported by the EU Horizon 2020 project INTERACT, grant agreement no. 730938 ) the measurement campaign NIRA is currently taking place at Sonnblick Observatory. NIRA (Nanoplastics In Remote Air: types, concentrations and size distribution) is a measurement campaign of the Institute for Marine and…

I am Julia Wenske, currently studying in the 2nd master's semester Earth Sciences at the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg and I had the unique opportunity to complete an internship for 2 weeks at the Sonnblick Observatory at 3106 meters above sea level. In the period from 26 July to 9 August 2021, I was allowed to look behind the scenes and look over the shoulders of the…

The Sonnblick Observatory (SBO) is active in EU projects that support access to our research station for scientists, so-called TNA programs (Trans National Access Program). Through these TNA programs, more measurement campaigns are now taking place at the SBO. Due to strict COVID requirements, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) was able to use the Sonnblick Observatory (SBO) for a new…

Since Monday, July 12th, 21, the measurement campaign BELIGI (Broadband Electromagnetic Invetigation of Glacier Ice) of the TU Braunschweig has been taking place at the Sonnblick Observatory, as part of the EU-funded INTERACT-III project. The aim of the team is to test different measuring methods for their applicability on glaciers and thus to get an insight into the internal structures of the…