Getting Started

I am a physics teacher at Liberton High School in Edinburgh Scotland.  I have been running an astronomy club on and off for a number of years but have been frustrated at the limited ability to do observing during the school days.  In recent years we have only been ably to take our optical telescopes outside during December.  A clear sky in December after school when there is nothing else on is a rare event.

Radio astronomy offers a chance to do some real science all year round so I decided to investigate what could be done.

Microwave Telescope Project

Small satellite dishes are readily available.  A quick email round the staff at school got me 2 dishes the next day.  I purchased a satellite finder from Amazon for less than £10 connected it to one of the wires from the dish and powered it up.  I bench tested it with the school's 2.8cm microwave transmitter. The results were great and I could transmit a strong signal across the room.  The normal experiments have a range of less than 1m.

Next, turn it into a radio telescope.

The dish was mounted on a party susan rotating table.  A compass scale was placed underneath and aligned.  A stick was attached to the arm to point down to the scale.  The signal detector makes a noise when it picks up a satellite signal.  A microphone and amplifier were used to produce a voltage which could be used as an indication of signal strength. Switching on produced a series of loud beeps as the dish was rotated. Time to do some science.

First Light Data

Yes! we have a scientific instrument which has a resolution of 1 degree and can pick out satellites.  Next task is to do a 360 degree sweep and work out how to measure the altitude we are pointing at.  After that a sky map.