News

31 March - Went up onto the roof to work on motors, etc. Bad news (as I suspected). The main elevation actuator has seized due to rust and azimuth bearings are almost as bad. These will be expensive to fix which more than likely means that they will not get fixed and we will not be able to do any observing

2004 news

5th July - presented draft operating report to John Story

2nd July - Meet with 3rd year lab manager to discuss project

11th June - Proposal submitted to John Story, project mentioned at School OH&S meeting.

Overview

The School of Physics is allowing Physoc to start a student run radioastronomy project. The School has a satellite dish on the roof of the Old Main Building, which is steerable, has a variety of equipment for use with it located in a small room in Astrophysics on the 1st floor of the building.

The Dish: 3.7M Acesat spun aluminium, f/D 0.375, Gain 51.5dBi @ 12GHz, 400 degree azimuth, approx -5 to 95 elevation. Servo system is a Omnitech Robotics MC1000 ISA card, connected to a in house built power amp for motors, 900 count/turn encoders on actuators.
Feeds: Commercial Ku band 12.25-12.75GHz single polarization 80K noise, Commercial C band with adjustable polarization 25K noise, Uni made 21cm 50K noise.
Receiver: Icom R7000, connected to a computer (a 386) by RS-232 and signal is feed to a 12bit ADC card. system temp noise less than 100K.

In the past students have used the equipment for various projects (including honours), so there should be enough information to get us started. 

We invite physics students who are interested in learning in radio astronomy and radio physics to join the group. We also hope to use it to demonstrate the basics of radio astronomy to students who are attending the annual Astrotrip, as the trip visits at least one radio telescope (this year we visit 2 facilities). You do not need any experience in radioastronomy or astrophysics (hopefully you learn some in the lectures). Hopefully the project will continue indefinitely, kept alive by new students joining the group and older students passing on their knowledge to the new people.

Initial Project Plan/Goals

• Starting early July, become familiar with the system, safety briefing (Some few people will need to go on the roof, so we have to do OH&S, authority from facilities etc). Work out what is working and what is not. Make (or request someone to make) any repairs / maintenance on bearings, drive motors, encoders, etc. Clean dish surface, dust off equipment, etc. The focus will be the mechanical state of the mounting system I have had reports that there have been problems with bearings in the mount not being suited to the environment, that they rust quite easily (the original azimuth bearings had to be replaced after 12 months, a crane was needed to lift the dish to do this).  If the bearings cannot be brought to an acceptable standard we will be reconsidering the project. 
• Install Ku band feed and lock dish onto a geostationary satellite (eg Optus B3) and receive a variety of free to air tv channels, beacons, etc. Install C band feed and lock on to a C band satellite (eg PAS8). Install 21cm (1.428GHz) feed (if is has a wide bandwidth we should be able to detect ~1.5GHz satellite phone signals on the Optus B1 satellite) to take basic measurements of the sun and moon.
• Measurements of the sun, moon at different frequencies. If the positioning computer is "happy" attempt a simple sky scan at 21cm. Investigate radio frequency interference (the library roof is a prime example with all the microwave antennas up there). 
• Build/ obtain a 2.4GHz feed to do wireless networking detection

If the bearings does become a "too hard" problem there are alternatives such as Meteor counting and noise from Jupiter, which are within the limits of the equipment (around 30-40MHz) . All they require is us to build a basic dipole antenna with some long lengths of wire. http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rsault/jupiter/  http://www.radiosky.com/ 

Primary contact and page author: David Kruss, dkruss@phys.unsw.edu.au

Documents

Our own documents

Draft Operating Procedure (Word 2000 format)

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/astro/resources/astro_dome.html

http://web.haystack.mit.edu/SRT/index.html     http://www.atnf.csiro.au/projects/mnrf/inter_summary.html 

http://www.bambi.net/sara/cliff.htm    http://www.radioastro.net    http://www.asnsw.com/wiruna/rt.htm 

http://www.radiosky.com/       http://www.users.bigpond.com/tmccarth/    http://www.atnf.csiro.au 

Member List (area of expertise) 

Ankur Chaudhary 

Justin Dinale 

David Kruss

Vamsi Gullapalli

Chris Nugroho

Andrew Sunderland

Ilona Coote

Rosebud Lambert

Tony Whelan

Emma Rainforth

Reuben Webster

Chris Nickel

Dave's Unofficial Comments

From various discussions I have had I have come to the opinion that OH&S could be very prohibitive in this project. The location of the dish itself alone generates many safety issues with several departments and the fact that we are undergraduates doesn't help the situation. The climate we have come to live in is the largely the result of knee jerk reactions by narrow minded lawmakers and people who do not take responsibility for their actions. I accept that there is a need for safety and that there have been genuine cases where mistakes have been made. As an example of how petty things have become one only needs to read this document SOP - Computer Use. I hope that in my lifetime society will have progressed to have some common sense rather that blame someone mentality.