athornett

NB I should have said these are 1.4GHz dishes not 1.6GHz - I wrote it incorrectly Andy

See picture Andy

These new dishes from Nooelec provide an inexpensive way of buying a 1m class radio astronomy dish for 1420Mhz hydrogen line observing of Milky Way. I have tested these dishes at home with success. Results on link below. http://astronomy.me.uk/testing-my-2-x-1-4ghz-nooelec-mesh-dishes Andy

No problem I will let everyone know ow how it does

I am going through a process of testing these aerials. I have 2 of them - testing first one can be seen st this link: http://astronomy.me.uk/testing-right-nooelec-1-4ghz-mesh-dish-26-2-24 Andy

I think I might have caught the X6.3 flare on my SuperSID monitor. Of you know about these things let me know whether you think I did capture it! The sharks fin spike on my trace at 9-10pm on graph on link below. http://astronomy.me.uk/comparing-supersid-data-from-lro-with-that-from-stanford-solar-center-22-2-24-when-there-as-x6-3-solar-flare Andy

At last I am having a go at making myself a Cantenna (a type of aerial made using old tin can - in this case designed to detect hydrogen on 1420MHz in Milky Way)! If this works it will demonstrate that I can make a full hydrogen line radio telescope for < £100! This would be a great project to offer members of my local astronomy group. Andy Click on link to see photos of my project: https://astronomy.me.uk/making-hydrogen-line-1420mhz-cantenna

Yes I presented at Astrofest. I am trying to encourage people to consider alternatives to traditional amateur astronomy. Yes I bought these detectors - which is why I wanted to tell people about them. I am in process of conducting range of other experiments with them - just haven't posted on those yet! More information on how they work and detect muons from cosmic rays available at CosmicWatch::catch yourself a muon (mit.edu) Andy

More on Muon Detectors at European Astrofest on Saturday in London at 2:40pm! Andy

Read the attached and more detail on my website on link below - using bananas to test my UKRAA Muon Detectors! Andy Testing UKRAA Cosmicwatch muon detectors with radiation source available in every home 28/1/2024 – astronomy.network Lichfield Radio Observatory (LRO) LRO-Muon-Detection-rates-with-various-amounts-bananas-280124.pdf

That's incredible and wonderful! Folks are 3D printing everything these days! Have you published the 3D printing source files?

Wonderful stuff! I made an EQ platform years ago but nowhere near as beautiful or compact as yours. How did you cut the sectors? Andy

Success! Now also got rotation curve and demonstrated dark matter see www.astronomy.me.uk Helped greatly by using Ted Cline's ezRA suite of software

You can see the NooeLEC SAWBird H1 in action on my website www.astronomy.me.uk

The interferometer progresses although no successful observations yet see www.astronomy.me.uk

NB Although previous posts have commented on large field of view of radio telescopes, I have noted that I can see gaps on my Milky Way hydrogen map with my 86 x 86cm array (equivalent to roughly 86cm dish so not big) when my changes in declination are > 5 degrees. However this is question of neatness of the map - I don't need this much detail to either map spiral arms of Milky Way or to demonstrate existence of dark matter, both those observations being quite resilient to variations in equipment used (some people have even used a tin can as their aerial!) Andy

You have had lot of detailed responses above. Simplistically, the options for small radio telescopes are: 1. You point the telescope in one direction at particular declination then leave the rotation of the Earth ro bring different parts of the sky into field of view of the telescope. The declination can then be varied to cover more of sky. I just point it and then use inclinometer to find out what angle I have got. I use this method on my dipole array see www.astronomy.me.uk 2. Small dishes can also sit on EQ6 mounts as long as they are light. Ideal for msh dishes (ie not solid ones) due to weight and effect of wind blowing on solid dishes. Bear in mind relatively large efeect of small weights far away from fulcrum. Also problem here is that radio telescopes left out all time and astrophotography mounts do not tend to like rain amd snow on them! 3. Purpose built rotators and directional finders, difficult to buy over the counter, so usually hand-built by amateur themselves. Andy

How would you use this for spectrometry? For that you need: 1. Some means collecting light from telescope. 2. Some way dispersing light unto its spectrum (slit, prism, etc.) 3. Some method of recording spectrum, usually a camera.

Hi Peter, I hope you've had some success now. I've had some success - see www.astronomy.me.uk for my setup and software I use. Keep going. You will detect hydrogen at.some point! Andy

I must point out my experience is limited - I only started 1420MHz radio observing recently!!!

It is difficult to identify Milky Way at 1420.405Mhz without calibration.

I have seen people succeed with Yagi antennae at 1420.405Mhz. In my experience these observations are very sensitive to how well tuned the aerials are to this frequency. The obvious question with your Yago is if you point it at Milky Way and then away again what happens to this strong signal you describe. Also what happens if.you replace aerial with 50 Ohm dummy load? Also what software you using and what SDR or other radio? Are.you calibrating the signal using dummy load or other metho Andy

If you are using your SDR for SID data then here is a good reference website for live data for comparison. https://sidstation.loudet.org/data-en.xhtml

https://www.rmob.org/index.php?lng=en#Andrew Thornett

Also have you seem RMOB website as place to compare your meteor counts to and once working to upload your data?