Hi folks,

Just a reminder that the Radio Astronomy Group (RAG) will be meeting from 10am on Sunday 11th June to continue work on the Radio Jove equipment and antennas and the 21cm neutral hydrogen line dishes.  The weather forecast for the day is currently relatively OK at "mostly cloudy", 15C & just a 10% chance of rain (for Pakenham).

This time I'll try and remember to bring the right laptop that matches the RTL-SDR USB software defined radio I brought along last time to check the test gear with!

All the best,
Chris

Testing the radio astronomy test gear with @rtlsdrblog USB SDR receiver.

Conclusion? The test gear works. :-) pic.twitter.com/CT6XwKCnIF

— Mount Burnett Obsvy (@MBObservatory) June 11, 2017

This is the radio astronomy equipment we're testing the test gear for. :-) pic.twitter.com/NbsqQevGjs

— Mount Burnett Obsvy (@MBObservatory) June 11, 2017

21cm hydrogen line dishes with cable feeding work going on (for their final cable runs). pic.twitter.com/UCzxhh2HtB

— Mount Burnett Obsvy (@MBObservatory) June 11, 2017

The next meeting of the Radio Astronomy Group will be 10am Sunday, 21st May.  It was to have been last Sunday, but it was decided to postpone it due to that day being Mothers Day. :-)

This Sunday we will be looking at some test equipment which should help us to set up/align the 20.1MHz Radio Jove receivers, and the 1420MHz Hydrogen Line receiver and antennae, as well as designing the two Radio Jove antennae.

Radio astronomy group also met today at MBO. Planning "Radio Jove" antennas now receivers are built & starting to check out the 21cm gear.

— Mount Burnett Obsvy (@MBObservatory) May 21, 2017

Current projects are:

1. Radio Jove - 2 receivers so we can do interferometry
2. Hydrogen Line (1420MHz) interferometry

Future (probable) projects include:

1. Magnetometer, for studying the effect of solar wind on Earths' magnetic field
2. There are many more possible Radio Astronomy projects, all within our means.

The next Radio Astronomy Group (RAG) meeting will be on Sunday 19th March at 11AM.

This working bee we will be installing and testing the Hydrogen Line Receiver (connected to the two dishes).  If you are interested in learning a bit about Hydrogen Line radio astronomy there is a useful explainer here: http://www.spaceacademy.net.au/spacelab/projects/hlineobs/hlineobs.htm

Our current status with Radio Jove is that we have now finished building the two Radio Jove receivers http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/ and they have been tested and aligned (with a signal generator).  The next step is to build two antennae, install analysis software and start using the receivers.  Should happen soon!

The Radio Astronomy Group will meet on Sunday 19th February at 11am to continue working on the Radio Jove kits and start planning out their testing and also the necessary antennas so we can pick signals up with them.

We will be meeting during the monthly MBO working bee so if you've got some time before 11am to spare to help out it would be awesome!