Rhysy

2025-09-16 14:18:49

Several months later than planned, here's out first data with our home-made cardboard radio telescope. Last time we tried we recorded data but couldn't get it to plot anything. Turns out the fix was simple : wait longer. This particular setup records data for a series of different frequency ranges (shown in different colours), and they all have to be complete for the data structure to be valid - last time we interrupted it.

In principle this is showing the neutral hydrogen data in our galaxy. In practise this is all almost certainly just noise, because we did a one minute integration using just the receiver itself (no feed horn) in my office. So this is first data, but not really first light... we'll try it with a fully assembled setup on Friday.

#Science
#Astronomy