Re: [ATM] Radio astronomy sorry if OT

[Dominic-Luc Webb <dlwebb@canit.se>]

Not OT, just slightly different wavelength. We'll survive.... :)

There are a few issues here. First, that 8 foot dish is not a
useless appendage in need of replacement. It is an antenna not designed
for the Jovian listening project. At its intended frequency it may
be quite functional and presumably a lot more directional than
a simple dipole antenna. There is the famous "water" and "water hole"
bands which I think are around 1.25-1.65 GHz. Probably the SETI people
have good information about the exact frequencies and antenna types. The
homemade SETI antennae I have seen were dishes about this size. SETI used
to do equipment tests, bouncing signals off the Moon or some such. If you
contact SETI you will likely encounter many more members of the radio
astronomy crowd. Maybe they can also give some advise on how to
position whatever antenna you want to use (i.e., height above ground,
orientation, etc) that are typical considerations for HAMs. In fact,
you may want to just read the ARRL technician license manual, which
covers antenna basics. Alternatively, you may regret learning that
some scientifically interesting bands are available to both HAMs
and ET. Encrypted messages are illegal, so any messages that are not
encoded in plain English by ASCII, Baudot or AMTOR, etc would have to
belong to ET. If you catch ET sending any other coding, report this
abuse immediately to the authorities. Getting serious again, the water
and water hole band is actually regularly, potently and outright
illegally hogged up by unscrupulous mobile phone carriers. If you catch
them operating here, report it. HAMs, who generally follow the rules, are
not supposed to (and usually do not) operate at the most scientifically
critical of these frequencies, but pro and amateur astronomers often
listen here. Sometimes, they hear the heavens, and other times they hear
phone calls. I did in fact detect this myself once with rather primitive
rig, so I know it can happen.

Another avenue for consideration is the detection and characterization
of organic molecules. This mainly happens in the radio spectrum. As a
very exciting extension of this, which should already have aroused the
attention of more serious ATMs, there is Terahertz astronomy, which should
permit spectroscopic examination of interstellar organics. This is somewhat
new concept on the forefront of astronomy research. No idea about
the receiver/antenna required, but have been planning to read up on
this myself lately.

Also, see this info on the Fick Observatory in Iowa, which appears
to be a well-conducted student project...

http://seniord.ee.iastate.edu/SSOL/RT1/homepag.html

Today, Jupiter with a dipole antenna. Tomorrow, who knows....


Dominic-Luc Webb


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