Jodrell Bank thing on iPlayer

Very interesting indeed; and great to see James Burke again, although I hardly recognised him. But Lovell was quoted as saying (about building and using radio telescopes) that anyone could do it. I seriously doubt it, but are those early experiments, with the discarded army equipment and metal poles, something that someone with an interest in electronics (and the shoulders of giants) could easily replicate nowadays?

Reply to
Dan S. MacAbre
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I did some work with radio telescopes for my degree 40+ years ago. The gear was very basic. The aerial looked like a bedstead. I can't remember how the receiver was constructed.

Here's a link to how to do it with modern equipment.

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Reply to
GB

Excellent, thanks. I once used a matress frame and springs as a crystal radio aerial. Probably not optimal, but it worked. But not as good as a long wire suspended on the washing line poles.

Reply to
Dan S. MacAbre

Maybe not so much now, but back in the days of magazines like Radio Constructor, you often did have ham based radio telescopes using ex war or military equipment Of course the sensitivity and frequencies were limited unless you had access to nitrogen cooled electronics to keep the noise down. Certainly the dishes and horns were not that hard to make though goodness knows what planning authorities would make of such constructions these days. Even now you can by connecting an lnb to a scanner covering its output frequency see the noise from the sun if you of point it that way. Sorry I messed this program. I vaguely knew it was on but have seen so many programmes about how they made Jodrel Bank in the early days, I thought it was going over old ground. Back in the day organisations like the national Physical laboratory and the Mullard Laboratory gave people things that today would raise eyebrows on the top secret scale, but back then, these were all scientists and would never do anything dodgy with them would they? I mean when the Russians sent their first impactor to the Moon they used old technology almost off the shelf to send their data back. It sounded very like a fairly so low fax transmission much as newsrooms and police control rooms had for sending pictures. This was why they could decode them so easily.

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

Sadly the current problem for radio astronomers is man made noise. it is truly awful in where most people live. to get away from it you need a large area with no habitation. This is why there are serious plans to locate on on the far side of the moon with a relay at the pole to control it remotely from earth. Round there you are screened from the earth and its only going to pick up the signals from the cosmos and of course from the sun. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

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