help

How to Record Home Built Radio Telescope Measurements on a Computer

-- Preetham | May 3, 2020

Question:

I want to build a radio telescope at home. I browsed many websites but I couldn’t find answers for a couple of questions.
How do I store data collected from radio telescope in a computer?
How to use the collected data to make radio images?
Thank you.

-- Preetham

Answer:

I think that the first part of your question has been answered before on the post which described how to record the signals from a home built radio telescope. As for turning your measurements into images, that is a much more complicated process. You will either need a steerable or directional radio telescope or an interferometer and some rather sophisticated software to make images. You can make some simple images from a directional radio telescope by plotting the intensities you measure on a grid of right ascension and declination then draw intensity contours using your measured intensities.

-- Jeff Mangum

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