Posts tagged radio
There are lots of ways to get involved in radio astronomy but they are rarely obvious and do not always offer immediate gratification such as when looking through an optical telescope. Most radio telescope packages involve some construction and software set-up by the user, and that can be time consuming and frustrating especially if there are no clear instructions to guide the amateur. Nonetheless, it is a very rewarding intellectual endeavor to keep you busy to the end of your life. Beginners usually purchase one of the 3 types of radio telescopes, which cost less than $200 each.
via http://www.radio-astronomy.org/node/248
nik gaffney (via https://flic.kr/p/HzYPiP )
Listen To The Clouds.
Listen To The Clouds - Live as the world flies
Scientists have long known that Jupiter is noisy: The planet produces intense radio storms powered by interactions between the planet and its moons, not to mention the wild gases at play on the planet itself. But they didn’t realize that Juno’s entry into Jupiter’s orbit would produce such complex data. “While this transition from the solar wind into the magnetosphere was predicted to occur at some point in time,” the agency writes in the blog post, “the structure of the boundary between those two regions proved to be unexpectedly complex, with different instruments reporting unusual signatures both before and after the nominal crossing.”
via http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-jupiter-sounds–180959686/?no-ist
I have a nagging desire to try and get every one of my friends on amateur radio. It’s been like signing up for a new social network and having none of your friends on it. Obviously, the bar is much higher than signing up. But there is also a greater utility there as well, because you learn some stuff about radio waves and equipment that is probably useful. And, also, Disaster/Civil Defense Preparedness! which is, somewhat hilariously, still the core rationale for why amateur radio is allowed to continue to exist. Anyway, the dream is, everyone is straining the WiFi at a conference or post-national disaster or something, and my circle of friends is making dinner plans via the local repeater instead.
https://ello.co/interdome/post/iSBGl1L_hSp8lBgSKmYbfA
Communication involves speaking, listening and understanding what we hear. One of the main technical challenges the ISEE-3/ICE project has faced is determining whether we can speak, listen, and understand the spacecraft and whether the spacecraft can do the same for us. Several months of digging through old technical documents has led a group of NASA engineers to believe they will indeed be able to understand the stream of data coming from the spacecraft. NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) can listen to the spacecraft, a test in 2008 proved that it was possible to pick up the transmitter carrier signal, but can we speak to the spacecraft? Can we tell the spacecraft to turn back on its thrusters and science instruments after decades of silence and perform the intricate ballet needed to send it back to where it can again monitor the Sun? The answer to that question appears to be no.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/02070836-isee–3.html
Mycophone_emergence is an invitation for you to become the explorer of the force of technology, to enter the realm where biological and non biological are no longer anything else but a type of material that technology as dynamic force deals with and manipulates through the hands of human beings. By opening the Mycophone_emergence, a ‘biohacked’ music box, you can explore a new kind of biotech organism that makes sounds like many biological organisms do and if you pet it on its hairy mycelia fur it’s voice changes, it could be said that it starts to purr. As any other biological being it needs maintenance to exist and care to live to its highest potential.
http://mycophone.wordpress.com/mycophone_emergence/
The radio signal that occupies 4625 kHz has reportedly been broadcasting since the late 1970s. The earliest known recording of it is dated 1982. Ever since curious owners of shortwave radios first discovered the signal, it has broadcast a repeating buzzing noise. Every few years, the buzzer stops, and a Russian voice reads a mixture of numbers and Russian names. A typical message came hours before Christmas day, 1997: “Ya UVB-76, Ya UVB-76. 180 08 BROMAL 74 27 99 14. Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikhail, Anna, Larisa. 7 4 2 7 9 9 1 4”
http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/4716/a-russian-enigma/
In Yugoslavia in the 1980s, computers were a rare luxury. A ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 could easily cost a month’s salary, and that’s if you could even get through the tough importation laws. Then in 1983, while on holiday in Risan, Voja Antonić dreamt up plans for a new computer, a people’s machine that could be built at home for a fraction of the cost of foreign imports. The Galaksija was born, and with it a computer revolution.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013–07–30-the-story-of-yugoslavias-diy-computer-revolution
At the time, the dawn of radio astronomy, the discovery of a source of regular pulses in space was a huge surprise. “We had to face the possibility that the signals were, indeed, generated on a planet circling some distant star, and that they were artificial,” said Hewish later. The timeline behind the discovery stretches over 6 months or so. In August 1967, Bell noticed regular signals at the same sidereal time each day. Almost immediately, the team considered the possibility that the signals were generated by Little Green Men or LGM as they called it.
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/511136/the-true-story-of-a–1967-contact-incident/
