Radio Astronomy at ASNSW Wiruna

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi

As many of you probably alredy know there is a 14ft dish at Wiruna that was salvaged from the old Mills Cross at Fleurs when the CSIRO moved their radio astronomy to Parkes.

A history of the early experiments by the ASNSW radio astronomy group is available on their web site www.asnsw.com

After some fruitless testing with simple receivers and aerials the project has been dormant for a number of years. Somehow or other I seem to have won the project of getting the system up and running again. To this end I have located the old aerial dipole for 1420 Mhz and refurbished it, along with an added 400Mhz dipole. It will be mounted at the focal point of the dish. A LN wideband amplifier needs to be mounted at the aerial to lift the signal level where it will be fed to a HP 5556 spectrum analyser.

It is then hoped to look at the hydrogen emissions at 1420Mhz from the Sun and Jupiter and then try to map some of the milky way if the signals are strong enough.

Any interested people should contact the ASNSW as I can handle the radio technical requirements but I know little about the astronomy side and I am not physically able to do some of the mechanical work required on the dish.

Barry

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Disadvantage of living in Perth, good luck with the project. If I lived out there would help you in a heart beat.

[leon]

Wow, what a great project and a challenge you have before you, I hope you can get the help you need, and I wish I could be part of the project, but that just is not possible.

Good luck, I hope you have that many helpers to the point you don't know what job to assign each person.

leon

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Leon.
h**p is a dirty word that should never be relied on.

The ASNSW has had this 16ft dish ex the Fleurs Mills Cross for about 10 or more years. I have looked at it rusting for a couple of years now and as I have some radio gear that can be used I took it upon myself to stir the pudding. As a Ham that specialised in UHF and dish aerials I had some basic knowledge of what was required. I built equipment for 1296 Mhz in the early 60's when most components would not work above 400 Mhz. I have also worked on Long range aircraft radars at 1200 and 400 Mhz

I will endeavour to get the aerial working and couple it to the Spectrum analyser via a LNA. I am providing the bits and doing the initial set up. If it works I will be handing it all over to the radio astronomers so they can run some sort of a project on it. I hope to be able to at least get some "noise" from the Sun on the Hydrogen emissions at 1420 Mhz.

Barry

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Hi Barry
Quite interested, but my electronics knowledge is of the "follow the instructions in the kit" type.

Will speak to you at Wednesday's astroimaging meeting.
Geoff

[tlgerdes (Trevor)]

Hi Geoff,

It is not all about electronics, after we conduct our next round of testing in Dec, I will be putting together a list of tasks for everyone to get involved with, things like, an accurate site survey for polar alignment of the dish, build some sort of finderscope for the beast, cleaning and greasing all the gears etc.

In December we will be mounting the antenna back on the dish. This is more physical effort than anything, and as they say, many hands make light work.

I dont think we are ready for primetime news yet. We want to catch a signal first. Hopefully, that will come in December.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi
It rained all weekend at Wiruna but we managed to get the dipole assembly mounted on its tower and fitted to the dish. No testing was carried out as the LNA has not arrived from USA yet. However it was too wet to get the receiver connected up.

There wil be no further progress til Feb as we can't get here for the Jan weekend.

Barry

[tlgerdes (Trevor)]

Adding pictures for perspective