Jupiter?

[erick]

I understand that Jupiter is a noisy fellow in the radio spectrum. So how does one set about trying to listen to Jupiter with regular stuff found around the house and garage?

I guess this is the easy way:-

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/20feb_radiostorms.htm
http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/

[ZL4PLM]

Hi Eric

good question :)

I hope I can help answer your question....

First off yes Jupiter is noisy .... and quite easily detectable from the earth.

To listen to Jupiter your going to need some basic items, sadly they are not quite what you would have hanging round the garage .. but you may have some if your even slightly interested in radio monitoring of other things.

Firstly Jupiter emits radio waves from around 40 MHz down to a few KHz

One of the best areas to listen is around 15 - 25 MHz as at this frequency range the ionsphere will give you less problems.

For a receiver you will need a radio that will either do AM or with a product detector ... usually this means the radio will receive single sideband or CW. A lot of these smaller broadcast radios sold as worldband receivers usually have these frequency ranges on them. Alternative ebay will certainly provide a cheap shortwave receiver.

The receiver shhould have an ext antenna socket as you will need more than that small whip antenna that comes with it.

But the garage will provide some wire im sure for an antenna.

If you feel like doing some experiments you can also purchase kits for building a radio too.

Antennas are usually wire dipoles .. that means two lengths of around around 12-15 ft long of thin wire. One of these connects to the centre conductor and the other to the outside of some cheap CB coax cable or even SATTV cable .. it does not really matter too much.

This plugs into the the receiver and gets strung out outside around 5-10 about the ground. Its not really too important!

So now you have a receiver and antenna you need your radio source!

As the position of jupiter is changing only certain times will you be able to receive the radio storms.

There are quite a few locations on the internet and even some natty software available to do predictions.

Radio Sky are rather a good place to find such tools and their Radio Jupiter 3 software can be downloaded for free on 30day trial and isnt really expensive bu there are plenty of prediction sites online too .

you can find prediction tables also on the JOVE project pages too and the Japan Jupiter Radio Observatory pages

in this way you can find when jupiter is above the horizon in your location and then attempt to receive it

what your listening for can sound like waves, or clicks like a woodpecker

best to have a listen to some of the samples on the sites so you know what to listen for!

So maybe you can kick things off by letting me know what you have ordont have in terms of a receiver

kind regards

Simon

[ZL4PLM]

http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/

Eric

have a look for the radio jupiter 3 jove edition software

pretty simple to use

set your observer location then run the prediction page and it will tell you the best times to listen

good luck!

[higginsdj]

Hi Simon,

I have a Sangean ATS505 receiver I purchased a few years ago for Time signals and has an earphone style jack for a SW External Antenna. It covers FM, MW, LW and SW from 1711-29999 khz. Is this any good?

Also, if you just string out an antenna, how do you know you've captured Jupiter and not some other radio source?

The radiojove site seems to be done at the moment.

Cheers

[ZL4PLM]

Hi david

yes sure you can use that !

the radio jove site will give you the details of the style of antenna and the dimensions

you need to tune around 20.1 MHz .. jupiter is a broad band noise source so its not essential to be bang on .... more important is a clear spot in the band so you can hear background noise not any terrestrial transmitter.

the Jove site also had some sounds of jupiter too .. they are quite distinctive so you should not have a problem finding out what your listening to.

best advice is.. have a go! you will be surprised sometimes of the results you will achieve even with simple kit.

and radio is full of surprises .....!

:)

rgds

Simon

[AussieSky]

The Radio Jove receiver is quite good, and cheap at $US250 built, or about $US155 in kit form. See http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/office/order_form.htm

The antenna is dead simple to build, its just really a twin dipole on a couple of sticks.

Plug the output of the receiver into your PC's sound card and plot the output with Radio Skypipe software (free version available) at http://www.radiosky.com/skypipeishere.html

There is one running at Grove Creek, scroll to the bottom of http://www.gco.org.au/scopes/index.htm

Greg

[higginsdj]

The Antenna is a little too big for my backyard :)

[ZL4PLM]

u can bend it round a bit ..... it wont upset things too much

[PeterO]

Hi simon,

any thoughts on this Silicon Chip kit http://www.altronics.com.au/index.asp?area=item&id=K1127


Peter

[ZL4PLM]

thats a new one for me Peter

havent seen that one before......

anyone else bought one??

[mozzie]

great thread very interesting id like to have a go at that i have a l/w radio im going to see if it has a externall antenea plug
mozzie