|
|
Year by year, millions of birds of messages leave their nesting places for
south. You can watch a journey of a few of them together with
us. This year, three white storks and a Eurasian crane, equipped with "bags"
on their backs, have taken a trip to Africa.
What we offer:Last coordinates of the storks current positions of individual storks, with the possibility to put them into the map.Judita - a white stork female marked in Dvur Kralove - archive of coordinates; even here there is a possibility to draw both her individual stops and the whole journey into the map, to count distances and speed of the flight. Arnost - Eurasian crane from Ceska lipa - archive of coordinates; even here there is a possibility to draw both her individual stops and the whole journey into the map, to count distances and speed of the flight. Dima, Sasha, Tanya - white storks from Ukraine - archive of coordinates, maps etc. 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.
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.
|