Making a simple Radio Telescope
July 14th 2008 08:00
My back yard dish antenna used to send signals to the moon
Detecting radio signals from other planets is not difficult to achieve. All you need is a little bit of wire a few pieces of timber and an old radio FM or a receiver that has access to short wave. Sure it is not as sophisticated as the professionals radio telescopes but it is a great place to start.
We don’t need to live on a distant planet to pick up radio signals the sun produces enormous amounts of radio wave that sound like “hissing rain”. Planet Jupiter is a powerful radio source that produces vast amounts of radio energy that we can pick up here on earth. Jupiter’s signals can be heard best on Shortwave radio at a frequency between 15 and 40 MHZ.
Radio signals from Jupiter is not a sign of extraterrestrial intelligence, the radio emissions are generated naturally by plasma instabilities in Jupiter's magnetosphere.
Jupiter's magnetic poles sometimes act like a powerful radio laser. The radiation can be so intense that Jupiter frequently surpasses the Sun as a radio source at amateur radio wavelengths.
Building an Antenna.
Making an antenna for a simple radio telescope is not a complicated, all that is required is some wire and some television co-axial cable. Ok lets build a dipole antenna. We begin with using a standard formula as follows. 468 divided by the frequency required for example you want to build an antenna for 18 Mhz 468/18 =26 then divide 26/2 = 13ft each side of the dipole will have equal lengths of 13 ft.
antenna for radio telescope
To get covert the measurements to metric multiply the number by 0.3048 for example 13X0.3048=3.962 meters. Once you have the required lengths hang the antenna on a tree pointing to the stars or erect the antenna facing Jupiter in the night sky plug the cable to the receiver tune to 18 mhz or if you are using an FM radio chose a frequency not in use by local radio stations pretty soon you be hearing some sound s from space.
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