Amateur Radio Astronomy?

[skrap1r0n]

Are there many Amatures dabbling in radio astronomy? I was thinking it would be neat to mate a dish to an optical scope in order to gather more electromagnetic info from the particular object you are looking at. I'm SURE this would be fairly expensive I was just wondering if there are people out there that are doing this?

[ChesleyFan]

There are, though I'm not sure where to find them.

There use to be a few small ads in the back of Sky & Telescope advertising amateur radio dishes, but they were a few grand. With a minimal set-up I think you can do simple stuff like "hear" Jupiter.

[ToSeek]

Supposedly some of the static you get when you turn your TV set to an unused broadcast channel is Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

[skrap1r0n]

I have heard that all static you get on the radio and tv is background noise. I am curoius as to whether or not you could tie a dish to your scope and get other info. I suppose the BIG cost wouldn't necessarilly be the Dish but the software to make heads or tails out of what you are recieving on the dish.

I mean, if you can use a scope to look at deep space objects, you are only observing the visible spectrum. With a dish tied to it, you could collect the rest of the spectrum.

Filtering out garbage and such would be the big problem. Then turning the cleaned up signal into something useable would also be a problem. I am by no means wanting to do this, I was just wondering how feasable it would be to do as an amatur and whether ot not there is Software available to help sorth the signals out.

[Andromeda321]

I've dabbled in this field a bit. When my uncle bought a house there was an old satellite dish that came with it so he was trying to get rid of the dish. Unfortunately I got the idea too late because someone took the dish completely apart as an April Fool's Day prank a few weeks before I got the idea.
I've still tried to do a bit of radio astronomy- Jupiter, Sun, and meteor scatter. None really worked with the exception of meteor scatter because I wasn't really in a quiet RF area and didn't seriously get into it.
A few links if you're interested:
Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers
Radio Jove
Radio Astronomy Tutorial

[sts60]

Also, try an excellent if perhaps dated (1975) book by David Heiserman, Radio Astronomy for the Amateur.

[Argos]

I donīt think it would cost too much building a fixed dish, on the ground, Arecibo style. You can have a, say, 10 meter antenna, framed with a cheap material, like concrete, and covered with the same material used in satellite TV dishes. The only problem is that you wouldnīt be able to point it. It could be made with $ 1000.

[skrap1r0n]

I donīt think it would cost too much building a fixed dish, on the ground, Arecibo style. You can have a, say, 10 meter antenna, framed with a cheap material, like concrete, and covered with the same material used in satellite TV dishes. The only problem is that you wouldnīt be able to point it. It could be made with $ 1000.

I was actually thinking od something more along the lines of an old sattelite dish on an equitorial mount. that way, as long as you had the coordinates of the object you were looking at, you could point the dish to the same spoit in the sky.

[Gerbil94]

I have heard that all static you get on the radio and tv is background noise.

By definition

I am curoius as to whether or not you could tie a dish to your scope and get other info. I suppose the BIG cost wouldn't necessarilly be the Dish but the software to make heads or tails out of what you are recieving on the dish.

I mean, if you can use a scope to look at deep space objects, you are only observing the visible spectrum. With a dish tied to it, you could collect the rest of the spectrum.

Most objects you might look at with an optical scope would be undetectable using plausible amateur radio telescopes. In radio there are other things to hold your interest, like neutral hydrogen gas (the rotation of the galaxy is detectable in hydrogen using a 1 metre diameter dish and a home computer from the 80s!). One of the brightest radio sources, Sagittarius A, is actually obscured optically because the radio emission is coming from the centre of the galaxy and there is plenty of dust in the way that blocks optical but through which radio waves can pass.

Software is likely to be both bespoke and free - the number of people needing such software is tiny so the market is not worth anybody's time, and an amateur who writes such software would probably like to share it with other enthusiasts. I think there is less amateur/professional crossover than in optical. For instance, the GAIA software is useful both for viewing an image from the William Herschel telescope, or from a 10" Meade with an amateur's CCD camera attached. I don't know if amateur radio astronomers use AIPS for examining their data, although I guess it's unlikely.

Filtering out garbage and such would be the big problem. Then turning the cleaned up signal into something useable would also be a problem. I am by no means wanting to do this, I was just wondering how feasable it would be to do as an amatur and whether ot not there is Software available to help sorth the signals out.

It is certainly feasible to construct something simple for a few hundred pounds that will pick up the strongest radio sources in the sky, most of which are supernova remnants in our galaxy. The Sun obviously emits a huge amount of radio noise and you can detect that easily during the day - the signal varies quite a bit with flares, etc. Remember that radio signals from astronomical sources are in fact noise themselves, so what you measure is a change in noise level as you move on and off radio sources.

You can detect neutral hydrogen with modest equipment.

The Jupiter/Io system apparently gives off radiation around 30MHz or thereabouts, although it's probably very hard to get rid of interference, find space for the antenna etc (that's a wavelength of 10 metres).

The links provided by Andromeda321 and sts60 provide much more information.

[spikes]

Hey skrap1r0n,
i have been looking into radio telescopes recently and found some good information. accourding to some a household T.V/satalite dish and reciver can be convered into a usefull instroment for this kind of stuff and there is some free software out there that will run on the linux platform. being a geek, linux is my thing so thats sorted. but what i am thinking is this, one small telescope is cool, but two on oppersite sides of the planet (i live in england) makes a virtual planet size dish, sort of. so if you want to get in to this get talking to me, i'll sort out the software and hardware for the data crunching and if we sync our dishes we could get some rockin results, ok more enthusiasem than knowhow at the moment. but drop me a line if you want to start up a little project.

spikes57@hotmail.com

cheers,
spikes

[Spacewriter]

http://www.qsl.net/SARA/

Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers

[Ari Jokimaki]

Supposedly some of the static you get when you turn your TV set to an unused broadcast channel is Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

Yes, just tune your TV between channels and take a snapshot of the static that shows, and there you have it, a map of the early universe.

[parejkoj]

Well, it ain't cheap, but you might want to checkout Haystack's Small Radio Telescope project. I helped get one of these set up at Carleton, and they are a pretty neat system. It includes the 2.1m dish, tuner, ADC electronics and a few varieties of software for communicating with it. This system focuses on the 1.42 GHz band, which is the Hydrogen spin-flip line. That's the same place that SETI looks (the "water hole").

You can purchase them from CASSI corporation, and the full system is about $5,500. Not bad for a full observing system (you have to supply the computer for data acquisition and communications though). Heck, you can buy 120mm refractors with just the optical-tube assembly for more than that!

Supposedly some of the static you get when you turn your TV set to an unused broadcast channel is Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

Unfortunately, it is only about 3 percent or so, if I remember correctly (I calculated it for a test, once). Most of the rest is from the sun and bleed through from all sorts of other things around.

[Laughingowl]

Also, try an excellent if perhaps dated (1975) book by David Heiserman, Radio Astronomy for the Amateur.

I have used the book and built a 2X2 wood to make a 4X4 foot flat screen siting it on the ground and used anything to stand it up at what ever angle you want. Theh used 300ohm ant wire attached bak to osscilascop and was able to get signals to show up and was exited that when i went outside I have point my antenat to area that orion's nebule was crossing in fromt of the ant.
I will not live pass the diseas i have so please forgive my spelling and typing you will have to read between some lines

Thanks everyone,
Laughingowl

[Procyan]

Ordinary Ku band satelite dish antenna's make remarkable radio telescopes. the Sun, and stars in general are not good radio sources but the sun will peg a satellite reciever. Even the moon is a good source. I wonder if other radio sources can be detected with commercial satellite antennas?

Welcome aboard Laughingowl. Your brain works well, thats what is important. What is your detector for the flat screen?

[Procyan]

Laughingowl, I meant to ask what frequency/wavelength were you detecting?

[Procyan]

Spikes, one interesting project might be to use low cost commercial gear to measure the temperature of the moon through its phases. the longer the wavelength, the deeper into the lunar soil you can "see", at least in principle. So if you had a Ku, C and L band antenna ... all 3 monitoring the moon in drift scan mode, you may get some really interesting data. L band is the longest and weakest but would penetrate a meter or so deep. You should see the temperature lag from Ku to L as the moon wans. Start with Ku and a "satellite detector"

[peter eldergill]

Heh, Spikes made that one and only comment in 2004....highly doubtful they will be responding

Pete

[Procyan]

Oh Gosh , you are right. I scanned for topics of interest as usual and did not realize how dated that query was. I am very interested in radio science. Happy to discuss further with interested parties.