

Measuring galactic velocities with a USB TV tuner [pdf] - mdturnerphys
http://www.sbrac.org/files/budget_radio_telescope.pdf

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mdturnerphys
Summary here: <http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-for-budget-radio-astronomy/>

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andrewcooke
has the link changed? it doesn't describe measuring galactic rotation (does
it?) (and how do you do that with the hydrogen line? what frequency accuracy
do you need?)

but as it says in the conclusions, this is way cool. as part of my degree i
used equipment from early radio work - my results were similar (well, worse -
all i could see was the sun and cas a) but used a bed-sized aerial, fancy
switching (tube?) amplifiers (that used ~20U rack space, in todays units), and
lots of liquid N2 (i guess it was a bolometer? can't remember any details...)

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mdturnerphys
The paper doesn't specifically talk about galactic rotation, but it does
demonstrate the measurement of velocities via the Doppler shift. Take a look
at the plot on pg. 12, that shows "a 'triple humped' spectral structure,
indicating that at the time of the observation, there were three distinct
hydrogen clouds within the field-of-view of the radio telescope."

I'll correct the title.

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lifeisstillgood
Aw c'mon - perfect HN faire for a long weekend

Astronomy has always pushed humans onwards and its great that these things are
within reach of a school or kids budget and its what we their parents need to
be boneing up on (as well as phonetic spelling and new ways to learn
arithmetic)

Fantastic stuff, didn't understand one word in three. Please do a MakeMag
special

