Podcasting since 2005! Listen to Latest SolderSmoke
Thursday, January 25, 2024
RIP Arno Penzias -- Co-discoverer of the Big Bang Cosmic Background Radiaton
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
The Art of Electronics #5 Paul Horowitz on SETI (and lots of other radio stuff)
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Save the Antenna!
Monday, April 18, 2022
Ruby Payne-Scott and Early Australian Radio Astronomy
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
Looking at the Galaxy's Spiral Arms with a Dongle, a Raspberry Pi,and a Homebrew Antenna
Tuesday, October 26, 2021
SETI, Proxima Centauri, The Parkes Dish, and Intermodulation Distortion?
A cosmically interesting troubleshoot. But I'm not sure about their explanation. Why would the intermod disappear when they moved the Parkes Radio Telescope off of Proxima Centauri?
Monday, September 20, 2021
Opening up an Apollo Command Module Microwave Radio System
Sunday, April 4, 2021
A Satellite Ground Station (Receiver) Made from Junk
Sunday, March 28, 2021
"The Dish" Turns 60
Sunday, December 20, 2020
The Parkes Radio Telescope Picks Up a Possible "Wow" Signal from Proxima Centauri (maybe)
An article about SETI and our favorite dish. From Scientific American:
Friday, December 4, 2020
The Terrible Collapse of the Arecibo Dish: Climate Change, Hurricane Maria, and Funding Cuts. Also: China's New Dish
From https://www.thewrap.com/watch-crazy-footage-of-the-arecibo-observatory-collapse-goldeneye-video/ :
"Alas, over the 2010s it was battered by a series of severe, climate change-linked tropical storms and hurricanes, culminating in terrible damage inflicted by Hurricane Maria in 2017. Unfortunately the 2016 election led to a government unwilling to fund repairs. Though new sources of funding were cobbled together late in 2018, in late Nov. 2020 it was determined there was no way to safely repair the telescope and the National Science Foundation announced it would be decommissioned.
The decommissioning was supposed to proceed after NSF determined the safest possible method, but physics had other plans. So it is that on Dec. 4, the whole thing up and collapsed with almost no warning."
More info (from NSF):
https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/arecibo/index.jsp
Here is a good 2017 article that discusses the electronic and mechanical arrangements at Arecibo, and the budget cuts it was facing. The article seems to almost predict the collapse:
Here is a comment from someone who worked there and heard the collapse:
Jonathan Friedman, who worked for 26 years as a senior research associate at the observatory and still lives near it, told the Associated Press news agency of the moment the telescope collapsed on Tuesday.
"It sounded like a rumble. I knew exactly what it was," he said. "I was screaming. Personally, I was out of control... I don't have words to express it. It's a very deep, terrible feeling." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55147973?fbclid=IwAR3RuwzTfJmqInrOOFB-nctknDzyB_VSr_qdNrjg9LbbxUnAbynKBv9stPQ
Here is an interesting WIKIpedia article on China's FAST dish, with comparisons to Arecibo:
Friday, November 27, 2020
6EQUJ5 -- SNR, the Big Ear Radio Telescope, and the "Wow" Signal
This Hack-A-Day article explains the significance of 6EQUJ5 on the paper readout of the Big Ear radio telescope. It is a signal-to-noise readout.
The article also has interesting information about the radio telescope that was used.
I have on my shelf John Kraus W8JK's wonderful book "Big Ear Two -- Listening for Other Worlds." John Kraus is the guy who built the Big Ear. In a reminder of how new radio technology really is, Kraus got his start in radio as a ten year-old boy in 1920. He ripped the wire out of the ignition coil of a Model T Ford to make a tuning coil for a crystal radio. He took the earpiece out of the family telephone. His father gave him a chunk of Galena. He used the crystal radio to listen to the early broadcasts of WWJ in Detroit.
Saturday, November 14, 2020
The Dish -- Virtual Tour -- New Indigenous Name
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Listening in on the Deep Space Network
Not long ago we took the DISH satellite antenna off our roof. For a while I resisted pleas to put the big thing on the curb for pickup. I fantasized about using it for radio astronomy. In the end, I threw it away. I do have VHF/UHF aspirations, but being able to use that dish just seemed to be something in my distant future (if ever!).
But check out what David N2QG is doing with his dishes: He is listening to very distant spacecraft normally picked up only by NASA's Deep space network. Very cool. Truly inspirational.
Here are the links:
http://www.prutchi.com/2020/10/15/recap-of-x-band-dsn-activities-and-plans-for-the-future/
http://www.prutchi.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/DSN_Lessons-_Learned_N2QG.pdf
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Saturday, August 1, 2020
SolderSmoke Podcast #224: Mars. Spurs. Bikes. SDR. NanoVNA. Antuino. MAILBAG
Friday, October 25, 2019
Friday, April 26, 2019
Nobel Prize winner Joe Taylor, K1JT, Talks to a Radio Club
Really great to see this session with Nobel Prize winner Joe Taylor, K1JT.
I liked his comments on his use of his retirement office at Princeton, University.
I also liked his slide on how far below the noise level you can go with various modes.
And then there was his reminder to 1) RTFM and 2) be sure to check the EME delay box so that your software will get the timing right when working earth-moon-earth.
"Pulsars keep good time."
Saturday, October 6, 2018
Radio Astronomy Knack!
This video has so much of the kind of stuff that interests us: roadkill antennas. 3D printers. Arduinos. Raspberry Pi, And of course, RADIO ASTRONOMY.
And the Thought Emporium guys have a lot of other great project videos on their YouTube site:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV5vCi3jPJdURZwAOO_FNfQ
I feel myself being pulled back into SPACE. First there was Farhan's new satellite, now this. Last weekend I finished a 3 element quad for 146 MHz. In a fit of nostalgia I used the same copper tube elements that I used to communicate with the MIR space station from the Dominican Republic in 1995. They have good JuJu. And Mojo. TRGHS. More on this later. Tune UP!