How Do You Isolate the Position of a Radio Source?

Question: How do radio astronomers isolate radio emissions from space that are at frequencies of the commercial radio channels?  — Mathav

Answer:  In fact, we try not to make measurements at frequencies that correspond to those used be commercial services.  At other frequencies, though, we isolate the position of a radio emission source in the same way that an optical telescope would for a source of optical emission.  By pointing our radio telescope in the direction of an astronomical radio signal and isolating the exact position of the signal by moving the position of the radio telescope beam slightly to “peak-up” the signal on the sky we can accurately isolate its position.  This is essentially the same technique used with optical telescopes.

Jeff Mangum