We describe a new suite of instruments planned for deployment to Cape Verde as part of the International Heliospherical Year.
The Remote Equatorial Nighttime Observatory of Ionospheric Regions (RENOIR) project consists of a bistatic Fabry–Perot interferometer
system, an all-sky imaging system, a dual-frequency Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, and an array of single-frequency
GPS scintillation monitors. This instrumentation will allow for studying the low-latitude thermosphere/ionosphere (TI) system
in great detail. Investigations to be conducted using this instrumentation while in Cape Verde include studying equatorial
irregularity processes, the effects of neutral winds and gravity waves on irregularity development, the midnight temperature
maximum, and ion-neutral coupling in the nighttime TI system. Initial observations from the RENOIR instrumentation during
pre-deployment testing at the Urbana Atmospheric Observatory are presented, as is the deployment scenario for the project
in Cape Verde.
Keywords Ionosphere - Thermosphere - Neutral winds - Airglow measurements