In-situ observations of intermediate layers in the night time ionosphere

Night time ionospheric electron density profiles have been obtained using impedance and Langmuir probe techniques showing the presence of intermediate layers. Four sounding rockets were launched in July of 2003 at Wallops Island, VA and two more were launched in August of 2004 from Kwajalein atoll, Marshall Islands. Although these rocket campaigns were conducted at different latitudes they both indicated a patchy spatial structure. All six flights used essentially the same plasma impedance probe but the later campaign included a sweeping Langmuir probe. More emphasis is given to the data from the later campaign, "Scattering Layer in the Bottomside Equatorial F-region Ionosphere" investigation, which was a part of the NASA EQUIS II campaign. Electron density from this data set is analyzed using Balmain's theory for a short antenna in a cold magnetoplasma and compared with data from the sweeping Langmuir probe.