Prepared for the Deep Space Exploration Society by Skip Crilly. Revised November 8, 2018.
This is an updated revision of Skip Crilly’s slide set, originally presented last summer. Skip points out that the revision includes a summary of the pulses of November 2017 through November 2018.. Two newer NRAO 5690 plots in the presentation show the very stable performance of the telescope, and the narrower Plishner beamwidth.
Bob Haggart N0CTV is working on building a new stairway and porch to the communications trailer at the radio telescope site. He started the work at home after taking measurements. Today he traveled to the site to continue the work. With him were his grandson Allen and Allen’s friend Ben. Bob writes:
“We arrived at 11 AM. Worked on the porch and covered the fan with 24″ X 24″ plywood. Ran out of time but did get the porch assembled and painted inside and out. The hand railing is only temporary and will finish next work day on the 17th.”
Bob’s work is replacing a small simple set of metal steps that has given us access to the communications trailer.
The original set of steps to the communications trailer. Bob’s new porch and stairway is replacing this.
The new porch and stairway provide a great improvement.
Bobs has built this new porch and stairway. It is larger, sturdier, and gives much better support. The handrail is temporary. The permanent handrail is planned to be installed on the next group work trip on Nov. 17.Bob Haggard N0CTV, standing with his work.
Thanks to Bob for all this work, and for improving the access to the communications trailer.
Attendance: Gary Agranat, Ed Corn, Floyd Glick, Glenn Davis, Steve Plock, Rich Russel, Tony Bigbee, Ray Uberecken, Dave Molter, Jon Richardson, Bill Miller
Attending Remotely via TeamViewer: Skip Crilly, Dayton Jones, Jamie Riggs
Last Trips: Oct 19 Observation Trip. Oct 20 Work trip for ED. Steve, Hans, Gary, Paul
Next Trips to site: The regularly scheduled 3rd Saturday of the month, Saturday Nov 17th. Observation the night before on Nov 16th
Meeting Schedule:
DSES Technical and Operations Meeting- 2nd Monday of Every Month
DSES Science Meeting – 4th Monday of Every Month
Accuracy: The notes for this meeting may be out of order. This was done to group the discussion into subjects for better clarity and continuity, so they are not true chronological minutes. As always if I have misstated, omitted or misrepresented anyone please feel free to correct me WKM.
Agenda and Notes
Ray Uberecken has his mount ready to install a 12 ft dish with capability up thru the KU band. He needs to move the dish from the KCME radio station to his site in Payton. The dish F/D ratio is the same as the 60 ft Haswell dish, so the 12 ft dish could be used to prototype feeds and receivers for the Plishner site. Ray would like some volunteers from the DSES to help move it next Sunday the 28th at 10AM. (Note: Recent change of plans. Ray will hire a crane to pick the dish out of the KCME yard enclosure before disassembly. This is currently scheduled for 7 AM Saturday, November 10th.) He could use some volunteers, power drills with sockets and a trailer. KCME is at Fontanero and 1921 N. Weber in. Bill will send an EMAIL out to the group.
Once the dish is in place the first thing that Ray will install is a Dicke Switch.
Ray also wants to know if we want to use the 8 channel UHF remote at the site for reset and control of the systems. We have not been using it, but that is available and installed in the communications trailer rack and can be commanded remotely from Ray’s residence.
Ray has also started his optical observatory with 8 inch Celestron and a good refractor at his residence.
Dr. Rich Russel reviewed his new Radio Astronomy Guide Rev. 3.
The RA/Dec of many of the objects are from both celestial coordinate year 1950 epoch and year 2000 epoch, so needs updating.
The output of the SpectraCyber is in volts and a translation to Jansky is needed.
Rich and Gary observed a number of sources on the Oct. 19th observation trip.
Some source positions were very good. Others were not. This may indicate a pointing error or other system issue.
They were getting a lot of clear source signatures but don’t know what many of them were. Rich would like to do cross galactic scans while changing declination to map the whole area in the future.
Cassiopeia A, Cas-A, was thought to be seen, but at a relatively low amplitude. Cas-A, being a 2200 Jy source it should have been clearly seen but they weren’t sure they had it.
Sagittarius A was strong and had the instrument setup with too high of gain, resulting in scale saturation.
Special sources 1 and 2 were studied.
The special source 2, a contact binary star is getting close to a supernova event in a few years, and we want to baseline it and get ready to observe the supernova emission.
To find objects Gary used the tables in Rich’s observing guide and in the Data Book “Astrophysical Data: Planets and Stars” by Kenneth R. Lang.
The V notch object that Tony studied was not tried in Rich and Gary’s session.
Galaxy Observations:
Rich and Gary also did an experiment to measure the hydrogen (HI) Line Doppler shift and therefor the velocity along the galactic plane. They were able to get reasonable hydrogen measurements of the galaxy’s rotational velocity at multiple points from the center out to the radius of the sun.
Rich plotted these observations and got a curve that is in the ballpark but a little different than the published data on similar measurements. This is the first time that the Galactic angular velocity measurement has been attempted with the 60 ft. dish.
See Dr. Rich Russel’s attached Science Meeting presentation for more detail on the site trip and the observations mentioned above.
Tony Bigbee also went to the site for the observing session last week. Tony installed onto the system after Rich and Gary had finished. He did not get the expected results on the RASDR 4 receiver when attached to the 60 ft. dish over the weekend. He thought that the issue may be with the pointing accuracy of the System 1 controller. We used System 2 at the open house when Tony had very good results but did not get the same on this last weekend’s observation session using System 1. Tony looked for the V notch absorption object and is using a new code to calculate the source amplitude. He did not get good results on this and suspects pointing error.
He calculated the curves for the open house and last weekend’s observations showing time and discovered that these are different indicating that something is wrong between the two.
Tony did a Mollweide projection plot like the one below. In Tony’s plot the green line is the meridian, the blue line is the galactic plane. The black X is the position of the telescope. See Tony Bigbee’s actual plot when he posts or sends it out.
Figure 1 Example of a Mollweide Projection
Rich suggests that anyone going down to observe should measure some of these same sources and get data to compare their results.
SkipCrilly says we have aligned NRAO 5690 at Greenbank and Haswell sites three times using the System 1 controller and it seems to be positioning correctly. Steve can do an additional observation next week, Tuesday and Wed and verify the alignment.
Another difference from the open house observation was that Steve Plock added the alternate cavity filter configuration.
As mentioned previously the coordinates of some of the sources are from celestial coordinate year 1950 epoch and year 2000 epoch so may be different positions now due to precession and galactic movement. A mathematical correction to the coordinates may be required to make an accurate set of coordinates for the current date. However, the small difference afforded by this is probably within the capture angle of the dish.
Glenn Davis says that his NTP time sever may be useful to improve the accuracy of the pointing systems.
Bill Miller said that the System 1 controller may still have a discontinuous elevation reading error. This was seen previously this summer and has not been fixed. This could contribute to a pointing error and inaccuracy on some coordinates.
Additional Considerations:
Anyone going to do observations at the site should try to replicate the studies of the observation guide and use the Observation Checklist to make their session useful and comparative.
Currently the LMST is close to local time, and so one needs to consider this and observe in the evening instead of afternoon.
See the back of Rich Russel’s observing guide for dish rules and limits. An observation data sheet and suggestions are available in the back of the guide as well.
We need a list of some calibration sources to start all observing session with, to be sure that the pointing system is working properly and that it isn’t broken with new SW drops. Also, we hope the voltages we measure from calibration sources (with known Jansky levels), will enable us to derive the Janskies of other objects we wish to observe. Janskies are the measure of the flux density that the antenna receives.
Three papers have been accepted in the next SARA journal.
“The Deep Space Exploration Society 2018 Perseid Meteor Shower Open House”. By Bill Miller, Gary Agranat. Deep Space Exploration Society.
“SpectraCyber Neutral Hydrogen Measurements using the Deep Space Exploration Society 60 – foot Antenna System“. By Richard Russel D.Cs., Ae.E.; Gary Agranat. Deep Space Exploration Society.
“Dark HI Cloud Observation using the Deep Space Exploration Society Plishner 18 – Meter Dish with the RASDR4“. By Tony Bigbee, Richard Russel, Steve Plock. Deep Space Exploration Society.
Skip Crilly discussed his new 28 ft. antenna that has a 5 pixel or 5 separate antenna segment feed and is mounted on a cargo trailer but will be used mostly for SETI. The antenna may not be large enough to observe the strange signals we have seen. File size is one challenge since it is inversely proportional to the gain and noise ratio.
Meeting was adjourned after much secondary discussions not captured here.
Old 9/24/2018 Agenda and Notes from last science meeting:
Glenn Davis proposes a graphical user interface called Astro Guide that would allow better guiding and tracking of radio sources.
Rich’s presentation and overview of the radio astronomy guide
Started with Floyd’s list
Added the 1420 MHz sources from the book “Tools of Radio Astronomy” by K Rohlfs and T Wilson.
Added the hydrogen measurements from K5SO, Dr. Joe Martin who has provided signature images of the objects.
Gary, Jay Wilson, Rich and Steve all went to the site on 9/22 and did observations using the 60 foot dish.
Used Spectra Cyber
Used system 1 pointing
Used the new setup with the cavity filter
Limit switches are set at +/-15 ether way of north. CCW to 345. CW to 015.
Gary got great pictures of the event.
Need screen print capability to capture the Spectra Cyber parameters display.
The Spectra Cyber SW is easy to take the data and use it.
Need a Lap Top with a com 2 serial port to attach the spectra cyber. This is difficult because most of the Serial to USB port adapters don’t want to set for Com1 or Com2.
Need to do calibration sources before and after observation of an observed object and keep all settings on the Spectra Cyber the same.
From Tony, “To avoid problems of solar interference all observations were made between sunset and sunrise. Most scans were taken with the telescope on the meridian.” Galt and Kennedy, 1968, ‘Survey of Radio Sources Observed in the Continuum near 1420 MHz, Declinations —5° to +70°’ http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1968AJ…..73..135G
Rich presented a number of plots from their observations. See Rich’s report.
The scan across the galaxy were at one RA. The radio hot area was offset from the optical.
The galactic rotation rate was also observed.
Got a lot of raw data, learned how to catalog it and analyze it.
The calibration sources did not show any signal above the noise.
Got good data for Sagittarius A, SAG A.
3 Papers have been submitted for the SARA Journal.
The Western SARA conference is in Boulder in March.
This is a summary of our activities at the Plishner radio telescope site during the third week of October 2018. Steve Plock, Ed Corn, and Gary Agranat contributed to this report.
Participants this weekend were Gary Agranat, Paul Berge, Tony Bigbee, Ed Corn, Hans Gaensbauer, Dave Molter, Steve Plock, and Rich Russel.
Our plan for the rest of the year is to work at the site during the third weekend of each month. The Friday evening is devoted to astronomical observing, and the rest of the weekend is then devoted primarily to infrastructure and equipment work.
60-foot Antenna Observing, by Gary Agranat, WA2JQZ
On Friday afternoon and evening Rich, Gary, and Paul did 1420 MHz neutral hydrogen observing with the 60-foot antenna. The primary observing goal was to take regular measurements of the hydrogen signal along the Milky Way galactic plane at 10 degree intervals, from the galactic center to about 110 degrees (a little more than the first quadrant). The Doppler shift of the hydrogen was measured at each 10 degree point. From that, Rich later used some basic geometry to derive a velocity and distance from the galactic center for each measurement. A second goal was to observe several known, strong galactic radio sources that could be used in the future for calibration of our observations, and also to see if we are capable of observing those sources in a consistent way (without unknown biases). A third goal was to observe additional galactic sources as targets of opportunity, to see how well we do, and to also see what problems we hit.
Galactic plane observing started at about 5 pm local time, when the galactic center in Sagitarius had risen high enough in the sky for us to observe. The galactic plane and most of the other observing were done with the 60 foot antenna pointed along the meridian (180 degrees azimuth to the south and zero degrees to the north), in order to eliminate the Earth’s rotational motion in the Doppler shift measurements. We observed until about 10:30 pm, when the team was then quite tired. To warm us up during the evening, we made a batch of hot apple cider.
Details of the observations and results were discussed at the science meeting on Monday October 22nd, and those will be covered in a separate post.
– Gary WA2JQZ
60 foot dish antenna on Friday late afternoon, as the galactic plane observations started.
We’ll continue with the discussion of the weekend infrastructure work.
Saturday Infrastructure Work by Ed Corn, KC0TBE
Our first order of business was to re-service the toilet and spare in the outhouse. They now both have RV antifreeze for winter. Next installed was a portable heater for winter operations and I labeled all the breakers in the out house. I then labeled the doors with instructions for emergency exit and the safety pin for privacy at the main door.
With the help of Gary, Hans, and Paul we have the first 3 tower sections in place at the bunker, along with the first set of guy wires. [More about the tower below.]
-73’s Ed KC0TBE
DSES Site Work Report by Steve Plock KL7IZW, DSES President
Paul Berge worked on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Because he travels from Lyons, Co. he prefers to maximize his efforts each visit. Also the weather window for the year is closing. I attempt to support his efforts as best as I can. Paul provided support for Rich Russel’s data acquisition which included galactic Doppler measurements. The team knocked off before midnight. Results have already been detailed in the Science meeting on 22nd of October.
On Saturday Ed installed a heater in the outhouse, winterized the RV toilets, and labeled the outhouse breakers.
During Saturday afternoon Hans, Ed, Paul, Steve and Gary all worked together to erect the new communications tower. The first set of guys were finished at 23 ft. by Ed Corn doing all the climbing. The majority of the rest of Saturday myself and Paul spent evaluating the elevation limit switch operation, including testing complete functionality with fault clearing via the built in override capability.
Later that day, Tony Bigbee showed up, and Paul and Steve supported subsequent hydrogen observations using the RASDR4 receiver.
The majority of Sunday was consumed by lubrication of the dish and adjustment of the azimuth drive chain. I also installed the conduit in the elevation bulkhead so that Bill Miller can complete his synchro wiring project.
Sunday Dave Molter worked into the night using the 500W floodlights and mixed over 1000lbs of concrete to try to prevent continued erosion in the ramp area. A big thanks to all who participated in this cooperative effort.
– Submitted by: Steve Plock, President DSES
Photos by Gary, from Friday and Saturday:
Position of the 60-foot antenna as it is pointed due south, at 180 degrees azimuth along the meridian.The Moon with the 60-foot antenna.View from the base of the dish antenna, looking towards Haswell.Haswell as the sun set Friday evening.Pikes Peak and Cheyenne Mountain were visible on the horizon, about a hundred miles to the west-northwest.Work Saturday morning at the outhouse.Work at the outhouse, including labeling.Hans helping Ed unload tower sections and a jin-pole, for building up the ham radio communications tower at the bunker.The first section of the tower had already been installed during the last work trip. Here Ed is safely secured to the tower after the second section has been hoisted with the jin-pole, which is also temporarily securely attached to the tower. He is fastening the bolts of the second section on to the top ends of the first section. He did this again with the third section.Ed fastening the bolts of the second tower section on to the top of the first.The team standing ready as Ed works on the tower. Hans is standing by the third tower section.The tower at left with the third section up. A 6-meter delta loop antenna was hung from the tower to the doghouse. Stainless steel guy wires were also extended from the third section, per tower specifications.Hans, Paul, and Gary installed supports for the guy cables, at one-third intervals around the tower.Hans and Paul securing one of the guy wires at the ground support.Configuration of the tower with 3 sections, until work resumes next time. The current plan is to install one more section with a rotator. The rotator shaft will have at least a triband HF yagi antenna and a 6 meter directional antenna for meteor scatter. Also, small horizonal supports will be added to support the 80 and 160 meter dipoles, currently supported at that position with a pole.
Our DSES ham radio club station K0PRT participated in the 2018 Washington State QSO Party, called the “Salmon Run” on September 15. We received this nice certificate today for our participation. We made 26 contacts on the 20 and 40 meter bands from our station in the bunker, using the multi-band vertical antenna. 22 of the contacts were with Morse Code (CW), the other 4 were with SSB phone.
All of the US states have ham radio QSO parties at some time in the year, on particular weekends. The QSO parties give the hams in those states a chance to get on the air and meet the rest of us, and gives us a chance to meet them. Canada also has some QSO parties, and there are some around the rest of the world as well.
Participation in QSO Parties is one of the ways we as hams in DSES can connect with the ham radio community. On September 15, 2018 we also participated in the Iowa and New Jersey QSO Parties, which were running that weekend. From what our contacts in New Jersey told us, we seemed to be one of the few stations from Colorado reaching or trying to contact New Jersey.
These are the slides from Dr. Richard Russel’s presentation about the radio astronomy observations conducted at the Plishner site during the previous Saturday, September 22. The observing period was chosen for Saturday afternoon, when the Milky Way around the galactic center was starting to rise high enough in the east. Observations were done using the Spectracyber at the 1420 MHZ neutral hydrogen I (HI) frequency.
Goals for the observing included 1) using our in-house Radio Astronomy Guide as an observing reference, 2) seeking strong enough sources listed in our guide that could serve as calibration references, 3) scanning perpendicularly across the plane of the Milky Way to observe changes in hydrogen signal while pointed inside and outside the galactic plane, 4) starting a series of doppler shift measurements along the plane of the Milky Way at galactic longitudes 10 degrees apart.
Some sources were found, but some were not. Among those found were Centarus A, Sagitarius A, and Virgo A. A number of peaks in the hydrogen signal were seen where we didn’t have any reference information that sources were present. The scan perpendicularly across the galactic plane showed the higher concentration of hydrogen in the galactic plane. We likely also detected the weaker signal of hydrogen known to be above and below the plane in certain regions. For this observing set, some sources like Sag-A were so strong that they oversaturated the voltage scale we had initially set. Doppler shifts were measured at 5 points, 10 degrees apart, along the galactic plane. Please see the slides for details.
Please click the link to see the power point slide show.
Here is our report of our work trip at the Plishner radio telescope site in Haswell, on the weekend of September 14-16, 2018. Opens as a PDF file. Illustrated with photos.
Please read our Review of our annual Open House at the Plishner Radio Telescope site in Haswell, in August 2018. We host our Open House each year during the Perseid Meteor Shower. The link will open our review report as a PDF file. It was an enjoyable weekend, with many science and social activities. A significant highlight is our ability to now make observations with the 60-foot antenna. With many photos.
