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The Jicamarca Radio Observatory is the equatorial anchor of the Western Hemisphere chain of incoherent scatter radar (ISR) observatories extending from Lima, Perú, to Søndre Strømfjord, Greenland. It is part of the Geophysical Institute of Peru (Instituto Geofísico del Perú, or IGP) and receives the majority of its financial support from the National Science Foundation of the U.S. through a Cooperative Agreement with Cornell University.

The Observatory is the world's premier scientific facility for studying the equatorial ionosphere. It has a 2-megawatt transmitter and a main antenna with 18,432 dipoles covering an area of nearly 85,000 square meters.

The Observatory is about a half-hour drive inland (east) from Lima, Peru at a geographic latitude of 11.95° south and a longitude of 76.87° west. The altitude of the Observatory is about 500 m ASL. It is about 10 km from the Carretera Central, the main highway east in Peru.

The magnetic dip angle is about 1°, and varies slightly with altitude and year. The radar can be pointed perpendicular to B throughout the ionosphere. (For critical applications, the dip angle can be determined extremely accurately with the radar.)

Recent image from Jicamarca Incoherent Scatter Radar

CREW