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Radio Astronomy
One day -due to repeatedly bad weather conditions- I thought of changing the wave length. After some handicrafts I finally yelled: 'Ha, you clouds, now I can see right through you!'
My basic equipment is a sdr radio box and the cubicSDR software on a Macbook Pro. Additionally I own two antennas which I chose regarding the wave length I am going to record. The bigger one I built myself.
Meteo Scattering - Perseids 2016
Although not intended to be my first exercise in radio astronomy it turned up to be my first successful one.
In August 2016 I used an sdr radio receiver and a small omni-directional discone antenna to observe the climax of the Perseids through heavy clouds and during daytime. The basic idea was to receive the reflections of a strong terrestrial radio source on the ionic trail of the meteors. I tuned in to the frequency of GRAVES in France 460km away. It's a huge radio transmitter with the power of several 100kW which I was not able to detect directly. GRAVES is pointed towards the sky and traces satellites and space debris in the earth's orbit. When a meteor hits the atmosphere it heats up very intensely and starts to ionize the air around it. This air operates as a small mirror reflecting the radio waves from the French station back to earth. For a short period of time you can hear the signal and because of the doppler effect the reflected frequency varies with the retarding meteors. This really gives the acustic impression of a falling star.
I detected about 45 meteors per hour being about 1/3 of the actual number. This may be the result of limited viewing angle or a limited sensitivity of the system.
compilation of meteor echoes at 143.0478 MHz USB on a 5kHz window. (mp3, 1,4MB)
ARISS radio contact with ISS - 1.8.2017
On August 1st, 2017 Astronaut Paolo Nespoli talked to German boy scouts at the VCP-Bundeszeltplatz north of Berlin. During the fly over the youngsters were able to ask questions. The video shows a screen recording of a SDR software receiving on 145,8 MHz in Munich during a thunder storm. As the recording shows only the ISS down link the questions have not been recorded. For better understanding I placed them afterwards as subtitles.
ARISS is an international educational outreach program partnering the volunteer support and leadership from AMSAT and IARU societies around the world with the ISS space agencies partners: NASA, Russian Space Agency, ESA, JAXA, and CSA.