Imaging the CMB

[blackparticle]

If a detuned analogue TV signal of static is 99% noise and 1% cosmic microwave background, what happens if you stack the frames together?

Not having a TV, I can't record any static and I can't find any decent video footage to download and try it either.

A quick search reveals no-one has ever tried this.. or at least posted about it.

Anyone care to speculate on the results or can record me a 15 minute .AVI to give it a go?

[FraserClarke]

You'd see noise.

Remember that the TV ariel is not picking up an image, it's picking up a time varying signal and then processing that signal in a known way to get an image. If you wanted to make an image of the CMB (which is flat to 1 part in ~10000 anyway, so pretty darned boring!), you'd need to point your TV ariel at lots of different parts of the sky, record the signal, and then mosaic all of the pointings together. Think of it as having a single pixel camera and trying to build an image up from that...

The radio/spectroscopy forum probably has some people who could help out if you're interested in persuing this though. The CMB is though very challenging I understand.

[blackparticle]

So no chance of any hidden cosmic images from the dawn of time then?