Every
year millions of migrating birds leave their nesting places and fly due south.
Join us and let us follow some of them on their way. This year, a group of
two black storks and two white storks left for Africa. Every bird carries a communication set that enables to track its position.
You are going to see:
Last coordinates of the storks - current location of the storks that can be entered in a map.
Krystof - adult male black stork (marked in the Rakovnik area)
- coordinates archive; you can enter stops or the entire route into a map, calculate distances and explore speed of his flight.
Johana - young female black stork from the Brdy Hills
- coordinates archive; again, you can enter stops or the entire route into a map, calculate distances and explore speed of her flight.
Zofie and Marta - young female white storks from Dvur Kralove nad Labem - coordinates archive, maps, the same as above.
Where are the satellites?
- position of the satellites that track the storks' movements; makes possible to predict when we obtain new coordinate data.
Day or night?
- the Earth viewed from space by Fourmilab; you can see zones of sunset and dawn clearly.
The weather? - satellite photos of Europe and Africa, links to current weather/forecast sites.
Monitoring of the black/white storks is a part of the African Odyssey project. See the project's website for more information.
How it all works:
The storks carry small communication sets containing satellite transmitters (PTT). However, these devices can not active all the time, as the battery capacity is limited. Each transmitter is active for 6 hours, then the transmission is paused for several hours or days.
To find out the exact position of a stork, a satellite must fly over him/her in the "transmitter-active" period.
The satellites envolved in the project include NOAA-H (11), NOAA-J (14), and NOAA-K (15). The presumption is, that at least two of them will be there within the given transmission period of 6 hours.
Some of the satellites will probably receive the transmitter's signal. If there are at least two signals and they are strong enough, we may succeed to calculate the position coordinates.
The coordinates are obtained via Internet both "manually" and using automatic method from the ARGOS Distribution Centre. The coordinates are then stored in a database. If the new data is allowable, it will be authorized and placed on this website.
Still looking for answers? E-mail us now!
Affrican Odyssey - project of Czech Radio 2 -
PRAHA
Written by Miroslav Bobek (Czech Radio 2),
technical solution by Ivo Hulinsky
and Martin Straka,
graphics by Tom Vild (Internet servis),
assistance Frantisek Pojer (Czech Radio 2) and
Lenka Hampapova.
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