From: Jan Lastovicka, Czech Republic
Date: 2002-09-11 1331 UT

Report on the visit of high-altitude Cosmostation near Almaty, Kazachstan

The Institute of the Ionosphere at Almaty, Kazachstan in collaboration with the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute from Moscow, Russia run the high-altitude observatory Cosmostation at a height of 3340 m, built in a broad pass between two peaks in Than-Shan mountains near Almaty (earlier Alma-Ata). The observatory has a broad system of multipoint measurements of high-energy particles (cosmic rays and a bit softer), gamma-flashes, X-ray bursts, radio noise (and may be something more), run at five different places spaced several hundred metres. What is of interest for the SPECIAL community is teh fact that the observatory is sometimes inside(!!) thunderstorm clouds and they run in-situ measurements in thunderstorm clouds. They observed a couple of very interested features.

The very first results were described in a paper "Intensive X-ray emission bursts during thunderstorms" by Chubenko et al., Physics Letters (Elsevier journal), A, 275 (2000), 90-100.

Contacts: alextdlpiacru (Moscow team), antonovaionosalma-atasu (Almaty team). Their measurements might be of interest to sprite community and maybe to those dealing in SPECIAL with cloud microphysics.