Guide To Astronomy

[Darci Carlton]

Iam an Astronomy guide. I live in the Aoraki Mackenzie Dark Sky Reserve, working for Earth and Sky where we take people on tours of the sky and research telescopes. Because of my somewhat unique job title I often get asked about what I do. So, let me talk you through what happens.

In summer I will start work at about 8:45 pm. This is about when well will set up for the evening. Setting up telescopes, checking alignment, getting the location ready for the customers and getting debriefed on the expected weather.

We use several different types of telescopes, but they are all tracking. So, one of the important jobs is to align the telescopes. This involves pointing the telescope at two bright stars and telling it what stars it is pointed at. Along with the date, time and location information the telescopes then know where everything else in the sky is pointed.

On a clear night, I will give people a sense of scale of our Milky Way Galaxy, teach them how to find south using the stars, show them the planets and constellations all using a super cool laser (it looks just like a lightsaber from Star Wars). Then we will get up close with the stars using telescopes to look at stunning clusters, planets and nebulae.

On a night when it is a bit cloudy, the research telescopes on Mt John will not be observing so I get to show off them instead. The MOA is the largest optical telescope in New Zealand and is my favourite to visit.

An important part of being an Astronomy guide is knowing the sky well. You can find constellations and telescope objects in whatever part of the sky is visible and tell a story about it. You have to work with what the clouds are giving you.

After all the people joining the tours are sent back to their warm hotel beds. Its pack down time. This is normally quicker and once everything is safety packed up it is the Astronomy guides will be heading home (and to sleep) to go to sleep as well.

This guide is not an extensive compendium of English grammar and style. It is meant to help our authors adapt to the house style of the journal and avoid common language errors. A general rule for this language guide is that consistency is key. It should be noted that language editors are not concerned with the overall structure of a paper as their role is solely to address linguistic ambiguities and errors.

There will always be variations in the English found in the journal as a whole, such as differences in spelling and sentence structure between British (UK) English and American (US) English, which we also cover in this guide. The following sections present the most important elements of A&A style and tips on how to ensure that your paper follows our guidelines.

This beautiful, full-color bonus activity guide includes 21 additional hands-on activities using common household items and supplies. Designed for use with the Exploring Creation with Astronomy textbook, this activity guide includes hands-on learning, space to record results, discussion materials, and a kid-approved rating system for all 21 exclusive bonus activities!

Where can I find a true Idiots guide to Radio Astronomy?

I belong to the BAA and have looked at this resource as well as on this forum.

I am looking as a real technophobe and with no radio knowledge at present.

It needs to be really simple to start.

Simpler or perhaps less wordy than the link you posted.

I find longer more technical articles offputting to read and glaze over by the third page.

Perhaps this route might not be for me?

Radio astronomy is one of those fields of astronomy that you can't simply have "hands on" approach like observing. You need at least some level of technical background to be able to understand what you are doing. Results of radio observations are often just measurements of sorts - graphs and charts, rather than anything you can instantly see or take a photo of.

You can produce images, but it is rather complicated, and as amateur with any sort of gear that amateur can house and operate - it will be very low resolution type of the image, so you can in principle only do "wide field" images - like that of Milky way.

Maybe that second one could be interesting starting point as you can "upgrade" it bit by bit. It is just a dish connected to satellite detector - one that "beeps" when you have a signal. So you point dish to something and detector beeps - you have a detection of a radio source! Most often you start by finding Sun this way.

Possible upgrade paths would be - mounting dish on EQ mount so you can use handset or computer to point it to wanted location. Another one would be connecting satellite detector to computer via some sort of sampling device - like simple external (USB) audio card that can sample input, so instead of listening to "beep" of detector - you record it via computer.

Valiv's link is for the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers. So in there is Amature Radio. The Radio Society of Great Britain is responsible for us here in the UK. Also the British Astronomical Association has a radio section. All of these have nice sections.

@StarryEyed thank you, that is more along the lines of what I am initially thinking of

As a teenager I was lucky enough to be given a SW Radio from a Lancaster Bomber from a radio enthusiast,

I had many happy hours sat with headphones on listening in. It went onto another friend who has had a career in Broadcasting.

I went on to have a CB radio, which was perhaps a step down, but got me broadcasting (talking rubbish) each night and again great fun.

Meteor detection using radio kit sounds a great way to start, thanks for the link.

Its not too expensive to build a basic setup. My first yagi antenna was built using copper water pipe and a wooden frame. For a receiver I would strongly recommend a decent SDR (Software Defined Receiver) such as the Funcube Dongle Pro Plus. The cheapo versions of SDR's just don't work.

Since you're in South Essex, it's reasonable to assume you would want either to slightly elevate the antenna, or to have a broad vertical beamwidth if attempting to receive signals from the GRAVES Radar. That being the case, a small yagi would suffice and a quick search online shows plenty of options. This 3 element -2m---3-element-beam-antenna-5dbd will suffice if you have a clear view, or you may need higher gain by adding a couple of elements, deepening on your situation.

If you wanted to make the antenna yourself, there's plenty of diagrams to be found online and it really is as simple as a wooden pole a couple of wire coat hangers cut and bent to the right dimensions and a tuning capacitor. Since you'll only be receiving, you don't need to worry about power coupling and high grade components.

I use a 2 element phased array antenna; a so-called HB9-CV design. This yields close to the same forward gain as a 3-element yagi but is physically smaller and easier to mount. I have a pretty clear horizon and mount the antenna on the side of the house, clamped to an old Sky satellite dish mounting bracket. I'm probably 500km further north than you though, so my common volume to the radar is very close to the horizon, whereas yours will be elevated somewhat.

There is a design on the BAA Radio Astronomy Group site (unfortuntaely not actively maintained at the moment but still open) that I have built and works well. It is designed specifically for GRAVES and a number of other people in that group use it. It featured in a Sky at Night Article (BBC mag)

Just to confirm that cheapo SDR's DO NOT work as well as the higher spec versions. I have two that that have been given to me by club members that switched to the Funcube after poor results with the cheapo's.

Totally agree on cheapo SDR's. They're ok to dip your feet into SDR's, but any serious continuous use such for recording is difficult at best. I have 3 of them, and the slightest glitch such as plugging in a headset into the computer can cause them to freeze. Or even just jiggling the USB cable. I switched to an RSP1A just for meteor logging, and it hasn't frozen up even once. Plus it produces much cleaner looking waterfalls. The extra bits really make a difference.

Well, what can I say? Maybe I just got lucky using an inexpensive SDR, an inexpensive feeder and a simple small 2 element antenna from 1000km away from the radar? However, I've recorded 910 meteor pings today and counting....

Let me clarify for a moment: The less expensive SDR's are definitely not a match for the performance of the Funcube or other high end SDR's. The differences compared to the high end devices include lower dynamic range, lower sensitivity, poorer frequency stability, smaller RF and IF bandwidths and less flexible interface. These are measurable differences.

However, my SDR (the one I linked to above) has performed meteor detection admirably a full year, with the only loss of signal due to my own finger trouble, poorly implemented Windows updates and holidays. Perhaps I miss a few scattered signals, but I have a limited common volume due to my range anyway. Perhaps my peak signal to noise is not as high as it could be, but 50db SNR is pretty big on the larger returns. Perhaps the device drifts a few Hz with diurnal variability, but a heatsink attached to the case adds to thermal stability. Perhaps if I wanted to look at the Hydrogen line or Band II signals, I might need better RF bandwidth, but I'm content with the 143MHZ GRAVES Radar.

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