‘We’ve also built a coil like this under water before, where the field is changed to be like it would be in Northern America - then they can see changes in the sharks behaviour, so most definitely animals use magnetic fields for navigation. We’ve imported hundreds of these specific sensors, and we sell them to Denel, and they place them on some system that flies towards a target and goes kaboom at the end.
Danie Gouws, SANSA
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‘We’ve also built a coil like this under water before, where the field is changed to be like it would be in Northern America - then they can see changes in the sharks behaviour, so most definitely animals use magnetic fields for navigation. We’ve imported hundreds of these specific sensors, and we sell them to Denel, and they place them on some system that flies towards a target and goes kaboom at the end.’
Danie Gouws, SANSA
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The Hermanus Magnetic Observatory also supplies one-minute data to the World Data Centre for Geomagnetism, Kyoto in Japan, for the generation of the Dst ringcurrent index, which is the most commonly used measure of geomagnetic storm intensity. *
Read MoreThe observatory is an active participant in the International Real-time Magnetic Observatory Network, one of a large number magnetic observatories which monitor and model variations of the Earth’s magnetic field. *
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A planetary poster is visible through an educational face in the hole display at the Space Science Centre in Hermanus - South Africa's national geomagnetic research facility.
South Africa maintains a scientific base in Antartica where it is ideal to study the Southern Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly - covering an area where communication systems are more exposed and vulnerable to damages and interruptions caused by high levels of radiation from space. Together with the geomagnetic and auroral observation research done on the Antarctic, Marion and Gough Islands, SANSA Space Science promotes interest in science through science advancement programmes.
SANSA(South African National Space Agency) Space Science emerged from the original Hermanus Magnetic Observatory that was first established in 1941.
Text adapted from www.sansa.org.za.
