4th Annual Deep Space Exploration Society Open House – Public Invited
Saturday August 10, 2019, starting at 10 AM, at the Plishner Radio Telescope Site, located on Kiowa County Road 20, 5 miles south of Haswell, CO.
Tours and educational programs will be offered during the afternoon. Radio Astronomy projects will be demonstrated, including galactic spectral Hydrogen Line and Pulsar detection with our 60-foot antenna dish, and Jupiter-Io radio astronomy (Radio Jove), Meteor detection, and the IBT (Itty Bitty Radio Telescope). Optical Astronomy and Ham Radio operating will be demonstrated.
Solar Optical Telescopes will be available to view the sun and its sunspots. Other optical telescopes will be available during the evening hours. The annual Perseid meteor shower starts on the Aug. 10th weekend. Meteors may be seen at night, sky conditions permitting.
Food will be served for lunch and dinner. Ice water and lemonade will be available for all throughout the day.
Overnight RV and tent camping will be permitted. Please let DSES know what type of RV/trailer you will come in. A limited number of 20 amp electrical hook ups should be available. A $10/night donation will be asked for electrical connections. Hotel rooms may be available at the Cobblestone Inn & Suites in Eads, CO, about a half hour drive away.
For more information, please contact us at our email address: information (a)dses(dot)science or destm(a)gmail(dot)com.
DSES Plishner Site Trip Report 6-14-2019 By: Bill Miller, Bob Haggart. Photos by Bob Haggart.
Location: Plishner Radio and Space Science Center, Haswell, Co. Attendance: Steve Plock, Rich Russel, Jonathon Ayers, Floyd Glick, Bob Haggart, Bill Miller
Accuracy: This is only a summary of my work on Friday and Bob Haggart trip from his report for Saturday and you should add your own and correct anything I missed. WKM.
Bill Miller’s Work Trip Report, Friday, June 14th Bill was the first to arrive at the site about 10:15 on Friday 6/14 and started by opening the trailer and removing the exhaust fan cover. He lubricated and reattaching the fan wires, started the air conditioners, swept the Comm. trailer floor and removed the mud left from the last visit. Steve came in shortly after and he and Bill went to the top of the tower to inspect the Liquid-tight conduit that Steve had previously installed for the elevation position synchro wiring.
Jonathon Ayers came in and assisted Bill to hook up the wiring to the synchros on the elevation axis in the top deck.
Bill then got some assistance from Floyd Glick while hooking up the wiring in the control deck of the dish pedestal. Thank you to Jonathon and Floyd. The goal was to attach the Elevation position synchro encoders to the synchro panel in the Comm. trailer. This would match to connections of the Azimuth synchros previously installed. It would complete the synchro dish position indicator system which is an accurate minimal tech backup dish positioning system that needs no computer.
Bill was under a tight schedule as Rich had a pulsar observation planned to start at 3:30. Bill tested the system and it worked initially but then started tripping the ground fault interrupter on the synchro panel within a few minutes indicating that the insulation or electrical clearance of the elevation connections was breaking down somewhere in the path. Because this circuit is 120VAC, the ground fault interrupter is critical to safe the system with the many intermediate connections and it did its job. (Caution) Bill unplugged the synchro panel from AC and it should be left unplugged until we have a chance to trace down the fault in the elevation wiring. It is most likely in the old terminal box in the control deck, moisture in the system or hasty wiring in the elevation axis Encoder box. I also believe that the synchros in the elevation axis box are either bad or incompatible and should be changed out and matched to those in the trailer synchro panel. Ed Johnson has a box of synchros from the bunker.
Bill had to leave about 4:00PM while Rich, Floyd and Steve stayed to make their Pulsar observation. This seemed to be going well but the large storm was brewing in the area and I suspect they had to abandon the site that evening.
From Bob Haggard’s Work Trip Report. Saturday, June 15th Arrived at the DSES site 8:35am. Opened gate, opened the bunker to retrieve keys. Noticed the dish was setting at about 45 degrees. Opened the Ops trailer and the battery box for 110V AC power. Mounted the solar powered, dusk to dawn, LED porch light. Removed the camera and the broken rear trailer window. Installed the clear window and camera right side up. (there you go Rich) The molding to hold the window in was rotten, have to make 4 new ones. The putty was too old to be used, will need more on next trip.
Removed two folding chairs from battery box and stored them in the OPs trailer under the table next to the filing cabinet. Stored the donated table saw and stand in the battery box. Picked up all unused unwanted lumber (there you go Steve)
Secured the battery box and the Ops trailer. Returned the keys to the desk and secured the bunker and gate. Secured the main gate and departed at 2:45.
No one else showed up for this work day.
The weather was perfect, a mild breeze, just enough to keep you cool while working in the hot sun.
There are the Minutes from the DSES Annual Board & Membership Meeting, held Monday June 10, 2019 in Colorado Springs. The minutes are by our new DSES Secretary Floyd Glick.
During the past year, Dr. Russel led us in measuring the Doppler shifts of galactic neutral hydrogen (HI). Building on his experience from navigation, he then developed his ideas on how to use HI Doppler shift measurements to navigate from star to star across galactic space.
This year we are undertaking measuring the pulse time of pulsars. Pulsars are understood to be the star remnants of supernova explosions. They become what are called neutron stars. The supernovas compress the stars tightly into enormous densities so that their matter become neutrons, and the stars are only about 7 miles in diameter. Due to the conservation of angular momentum, their spin increases very rapidly. The youngest rotate with periods of miliseconds. Their magnetic poles are often offset from their spin axes. Electrons spin rapidly along the outgoing magnetic field lines of the poles, producing synchrotron radiation, which in turn produce broad band radio signals. If a magnetic pole is oriented so that it points at Earth during the rotation, we receive a radio pulse, and maybe pulses at other wavelengths too. (That is how pulsars were first discovered during the late 1960s.)
The pulses are very regular. But the spin of the pulsars gradually lose energy and slow down over time too.
Dr. Russel took his ideas for navigation, and now he has developed a concept for doing interstellar navigation using pulsars as references. That’s what this slide set is about. He just submitted a paper on the topic to the journal of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers.
By Gary Agranat. Photos courtesy of SARA.With contributions by Bob Haggart, Steve Plock, and Skip Crilly.
The 2019 Society of Amateur Radio AstronomersWestern Conference this year was held in Boulder, Colorado, from March 22nd to 25th. The Deep Space Exploration Society co-hosted the conference this year, with a field trip to the Plishner radio telescope site in Haswell. DSES members presented 5 of the talks at the conference. The venue location was the Boulder campus of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers 2019 Western Conference, group photo Sunday morning. (Courtesy of SARA)
The conference activities began on Friday afternoon, with a visit to the NCAR Mesa Labs High Altitude Observatory (HAO). During the weekend the conference was hosted at the NCAR Center Green conference Center in Boulder. Nine talks were presented by SARA members on a variety of amateur radio astronomy topics. Plus the keynote address was by the HAO Director Scott McIntosh about a regular predictability of the solar cycle based on an understanding of the sun’s magnetic physics.
DSES members presented 5 of the papers at the conference:
“Milky Way Rotation Rate and Mass Estimation Using HI Measurements, Latest Updates as of February 2019 Observational Data”, by Dr. Richard Russel.
“Earth’s Orbital Position in the Solar System using Galactic HI Measurements, Updated to Include: Fourth Observation Results with Solar System Yaw Measurements”, by Dr. Richard Russel.
“Simultaneous and Associated Pulses Observed with Synchronized and Distant Radio Telescopes”, by Skip Crilly.
“The Future of Radio Astronomy: The Square Kilometer Array and the Next Generation Very Large Array”, by Dayton Jones.
“Expanding the RTL2832u SDR Dongle”, by Hans Gaensbauer.
Also attending the conference from DSES were Ray Uberecken, Steve Plock, Bill Miller, Paul Berge, Brian Nelson, and Gary Agranat.
Over the weekend were field trips to two sites: The North Table Mountain antenna site operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Little Thompson Observatory at the Berthoud High School. Table Mountain is the site where DSES got its start, using the two 60 foot dish antennas there. That was one of the locations we visited on the site. We also visited Terry Bullet’s lab, and a lab for measuring radar cross sections of test objects (like military personnel carriers). The group went for dinner Saturday evening at the Three Margaritas Restaurant in Longmont.
For Sunday evening and Monday, DSES sponsored a field trip visit to its 60-foot dish antenna site at Haswell. Ahead of time, DSES members help prepare the site for the visit, and helped with providing food. Then, much of the visit time was devoted to touring and discussions and getting to know one another better. The dish antenna was made available for observing.
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Bob Haggart wrote about the work he contributed: “I went to the site on Sunday and stayed overnight. While there I cleaned up the ops trailer, placed a shelving unit to help keep order in the area. I also installed a camera on the rear door, in order to view the dish antenna movement. That evening I lit up the dish with a single light so that it can be seen at night.” It made the dish appear as a “ghost-like ship”. Bob also mentioned the amount of mud that made cleaning difficult.
Steve Plock wrote about additional work: He left the conference Sunday afternoon, stopped at his home to pick up frozen pizza for serving to the group, and proceeded to the site. He delivered a large microwave oven as well. He stayed overnight with Skip Crilly at the guest house in Haswell. “For quite some time on Monday I helped Skip with his new setup to make sure it worked OK. He put in a new receiver system for the SETI data acquisition. The photo with the feet was me climbing into W9YS’s vehicle that had locked keys inside.” Steve and Bill Miller took several visitors on tours of the pedestal. “The dish antenna was made available for observing. ” Several other DSES members helped with the site visit, including Ed Corn and Rich Russel.
Skip Crilly also wrote: “In between DSES member Skip Crilly’s endless story-telling, a new simultaneous SETI pulse detection receiver and its software was installed in the comms trailer. The new receiver system has approximately twice the pulse detection throughput as the previous system, which was used for simultaneous SETI with Green Bank, since late 2017. Details about the 2017 to 2019 simultaneous pulse observations are in a presentation Skip gave at the SARA Western Conference. More SETI fun will be forthcoming, especially when the third simultaneous dish comes on line, planned for mid-2019. Stay tuned and keep looking up!”
Thanks to everyone in SARA, DSES, Little Thompson Observatory, and NCAR who supported and made this a great conference. And thanks to everyone who participated.
Some photo highlights from the conference
Visiting the HAO Mesa Lab. The Mesa Lab was the site of the first commercial Cray computer.Scott Mcintosh giving his keynote talk about recent work on the predictability of the solar cycle, based on the underlying magnetic physics of the Sun. For more see http://opensky.ucar.edu/islandora/object/articles:22329Dr. Richard Russel from DSES presenting his talk, about estimating the mass of the part of the Milky Way galaxy within the Sun’s orbit, from taking HI (21 cm neutral hydrogen) Doppler velocity measurements.
Dr. Richard Russel.
We were served deli lunches each day of the conference.
Visit to Table Mountain – Tour of Terry Bullets lab.
Visit to the twin 60-foot dish antennas on Table Mountain, where DSES started in 1991.
Dinner Saturday evening at Three Margaritas Restaurant in Longmont.Visit to Little Thompson Observatory. Terry Bullet showing us the meteor scatter experiment.
Hans Gaensbauer presenting his talk, “Expanding the RTL2832u SDR Dongle”.
Dayton Jones presenting his talk about the future ahead for radio astronomy.
Photos from the visit to the DSES radio telescope site in Haswell.
On Sunday March 9, 2019 a group of Deep Space Exploration Society members in Colorado Springs salvaged a 2 meter diameter satellite dish antenna, to repurpose it for solar radio astronomy. The antenna came from the KCME commercial broadcast station, which was no longer using it. The group moved the antenna to the home of DSES member Floyd Glick. Floyd will configure and test it there, to use for solar radio astronomy. It will then eventually be moved to the group’s Plishner antenna site in Kiowa County.
The DSES members who participated were Steve Plock, Ed Corn, Floyd Glick, Myron Babcock, Bill Miller, Bob Haggard, and Gary Agranat.
Here are some photos from the move, taken by Bob Haggard, and one photo by Gary Agranat.
Ed Corn, Floyd Glick, and Steve Plock.
Floyd Glick, Myron Babcock, Steve Plock, Ray Uberecken, and Bill Miller moving the dish antenna from its original location.
Floyd Glick and Ray Uberecken moving the antenna pedastal. It was secured by several concrete blocks.
Ray Uberecken. The concrete blocks stabilize the pedestal.
Deep Space Exploration Society members Bill Miller, Gary Agranat, and Tony Bigbee participated as judges at the 2019 Pikes Peak Regional Science Fair. The Fair was held at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs University Center building on Saturday February 23rd. This year 115 students from 20 schools presented projects. The purpose of the fair is to encourage students to take more active interest in the study of science and mathematics, to encourage experiment and consideration of science careers, and to provide a means of reward and recognition. Informally the fair gives students an opportunity to interact with and get helpful feedback from specialists already in the fields.
Bill and Gary were at the science fair to judge and award prizes specifically offered by DSES. The prizes were offered to encourage projects related to astronomy and radio. However any outstanding STEM project related closely enough to the fields were considered. Bill and Gary interviewed 17 students in 16 projects at the fair, at the middle school and high school levels, with most of the topics in physical sciences or engineering. A scoring criteria was used based on the qualities of the ideas, hypotheses, methods, data, and lessons learned.
DSES awarded one Senior Division prizes and two Junior Division prizes:
For outstanding senior division project we gave a certificate and $100 to Mark Bloomfield. Mark received 6 additional special awards from other organizations, and he placed 3rd in the Fair’s Senior Physical Sciences category.
• Mark Bloomfield [grade 11] [project SC9], Coronado High School/David Bloomfield: ‘‘Charged up: Testing lithium ion battery performance using a Raspberry Pi load cell’’
For the two Junior Division prizes we gave a certificate and $50 each to Hailey Kressen and Benjamin Homan.
• Hailey Kressin [grade8] [project 8E10], The Classical Academy JHS/Candus Muir: ‘‘A sixth sense: Omnidirectional presence detection system’’. Hailey received 6 additional special awards, and she placed 2nd in the Grade 8 Physical Sciences & Engineering category.
• Benjamin Homan[8] [8E1], Monument Academy/Karl Brown: ‘‘Does pressure affect carbondioxide absorption by polyethyleneimine?’’ Benjamin received 5 additional special awards, and he placed 4th in the Grade 8 Physical Sciences & Engineering category.
Tony participated as a general Award Judge for the Fair itself. He judged middle school social and behavioral science projects.
Tony took a few minutes to take some photos. The first three photos are from when Bill and Gary interviewed Connor Takenaka about his cybersecurity project. The third includes Tony.
Bill is show interviewing Josh Nakka and Katelynn Salmon for their Senior level science project “Engineering a portable refreshable braille device for improved communication.” Gary is interviewing Jenna Salvat for her Senior level science project “A geothermal analysis of metamorphic lithologies surrounding Cripple Creek and Victor Diatreme”.
Projects Bill and Gary interviewed:
“Shields Up” by Samantha Cerniglia. She tested the ability of several materials to block cosmic rays. She built a cloud chamber to do the tests.
“LED Lights: Hero or Zero” by Michael Wu. He tested energy efficiency savings claims of a set of consumer LED lights, and found those fell short.
“Energy Efficiency” by Samantha Schaefer. She tested the effects of placing different colored filters on solar energy panels.
“This Will Blow You Away” by Levi Archambault. He tested the efficiency of windmills with different number of blades, with different wind speed conditions.
“Prevent Basement Floods” by Austin Cellar. He designed and tested a low cost device to detect basement water leaks and flooding, and send an alarm.
“Cleaning glasses with portable ultrasonics” by Ty Rockey. He researched, designed, and tested a low cost device to clean eye glasses using water cavitation.
“Does Pressure Affect Carbon Dioxide Absorption by Polyethyleneimine (PEI)” by Benjamin Homan. He tested the ability of PEI to absorb carbon dioxide at sea level and 7350 foot elevation pressures. He utilized previous research by others and theory that predicted lower pressure would result in less absorption, due to fewer number of molecules per volume. The material would be applicable to CO2 scrubbers in submarines and spacecraft. Benjamin won one of our two Junior Division prizes.
“Analyzing how various hydroelectric designs can ameliorate the accessibility of tides” by Chandler Wilburn. He tried to design and test an alternate way to generate electrical power from tides, using a large pressure plate instead of flow past a turbine.
“Neodymium field slide” by Amir Laarja. He tested different position configurations of magnets in a generator, to test differences in efficiency.
“A sixth sense: Omni-directional presence detection system” by Hailey Kressin. She designed and tested a system to detect the presence of approaching objects within 1.5 meters in 1 second, to aid people who are blind. Hailey won one of our two Junior Division prizes.
“Cybersecurity: Defending our Computers” by Connor Takenaka. He tested the effectiveness of different length and complexity passwords to prevent or delay hacking.
“Variable scintillation frequency in muon detection” by Xander Duvall.
“Using Solar Radiation” by Erick Lopez. He tested the effectiveness of several designs for homes to retain heat from solar heating.
“Engineering a portable low-cost braille device for improved communication” by Josh Nakka and Katelynn Salmon.
“A geothermal analysis of metamorphic lithologies surrounding the Cripple Creek and Victor diatreme” by Jenna Salvat.
“Charged up: Testing lithium ion battery performance using a Raspberry Pi load cell” by Mark Bloomfield. He developed a Raspberry Pi constant load cell to test how temperature, drain rate, and charging patterns affected energy recovered in charging. Mark won our Senior Division Prize.
Bill presented the DSES awards at the science fair awards ceremony on the following Tuesday, February 26th.
Abstract: Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) is a confounding problem in radio SETI, as false positives are introduced into receiver signals. Various methods exist to attempt to excise suspected RFI, with a possibility that true positives are rejected, and that un-excised RFI remain as false positives. Uncertain far side-lobe antenna patterns add to the uncertainty. To ameliorate the RFI problem, a system having geographically-spaced simultaneous and synchronized reception has been implemented. A radio telescope at the Green Bank Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia has been combined with a radio telescope of the Deep Space Exploration Society, near Haswell, Colorado to implement a spatial filter having a thrice-Moon-distance transmitter rejection. Approximately 135 hours of simultaneous synchronized pulse observations have been captured from November 2017 through February 2019. This presentation describes the problem, observation system, observed results and a proposed hypothesis to be subjected to attempts at refutation through further experimentation and RFI and ETI transmitter signal model development.
Two wave audio files from the presentation, “Tones” and “Slow Tones”:
The Deep Space Exploration Society will closely participate with this year’s Western Conference of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers. Conference talks will be given on Saturday March 23. On Sunday March 24 conference participants can travel to visit the DSES radio telescope site in Haswell, CO. A hotel in Eads is available for staying overnight. Registration is open until February 25, 2019. Below is an announcement we received to pass on.
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Radio amateurs with an interest in radio astronomy and space science are invited to attend the Western Conference of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers, which will meet in Boulder, March 23-24, 2019.
Please click the link to read The Deep Space Exploration Society 2018 Annual Year End Report, in PDF. Written by Bill Miller, DSES Vice President and acting Secretary.
