DSES Technical and Operations Meeting Minutes- October 8, 2018

DSES Technical and Operations Meeting Minutes- October 8, 2018 by Bill Miller, DSES Vice President and Acting Secretary.

[Please click to read the PDF file.]

News & Announcement Board

Upcoming Activities

* NOTE: The next DSES Science Meeting will be Monday May 20 2019, 5:30PM at the home of Dr. Richard Russel. Due to Memorial Day on Monday, May 27, we are changing the date from the 4th Monday of the month to the 3rd Monday, just this month. Please contact us if you would like information to attend.

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Work trips to the Haswell antenna site are now scheduled for each third Saturday of the month, with weather alternates on Sunday. This third weekend was chosen because it comes between our engineering and science meetings. Having a regular date helps our members plan ahead, especially those who must travel long distances.

Our engineering meetings are held on the second Monday of each month. Members can participate remotely using Teamviewer. Our science meetings are held on the fourth Monday of each month. Start time is 5:30 PM. Please contact us if you would like information to attend.

News

Voting for the election of the 2019 DSES Board Members is now completed. Results will be reported soon.

DSES members attended the 2019 Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers Western Conference, held March 22 to 25, 2019, at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Richard Russel, Skip Crilly, Hans Gaensbauer, Dayton Jones, and Tony Bigbee presented papers. Also attending were Ray Uberecken, Steve Plock, Bill Miller, Paul Berge, Brian Nelson, and Gary Agranat. There were field trips on Saturday evening to the NOAA site on North Table Mountain, where DSES originally set up in 1991 to use two 60 foot antennas there, and to the Little Thompson Observatory at Berthoud, CO. (http://www.starkids.org). On Sunday evening and Monday DSES hosted a field trip visit at its Haswell site.

Our 2019 Deep Space Exploration Society Membership Drive has started. Membership in DSES runs from the start of each calendar year. Dues continue to be $50 / year for voting members and $20 / year for non-voting members. Please renew your membership now. We welcome new members as well. Please read DSES Treasurer Myron Babcock’s membership message in our linked post, with more information about being a member, and on how to pay membership dues.

Website Update Notes

On the Education Page a section for particular educational Topics has been added. There, an article has been added from Astromomy Magazine, “How William Huggins Shaped Astrophysics”, by Barbara J. Becker (Astronomy Magazine, September 2018). How Doppler measurements came to be used in astrophysics in the 19th century.

Our current DSES Information Brochure (in pdf) is now online.

Active Experiments

Current experiments now in progress at the Plishner Radio Astronomy & Space Science Center site in Haswell:

60-foot dish antenna:
[August 19, 2018] The 60 foot dish antenna is now periodically being used for joint observing runs for SETI with Skip Crilly at the Greenbank Observatory in West Virginia. These joint observations are discussed in Skip's presentation slides from the 2018 SARA Western Conference at Stanford. See the slides on our Publications Page, in the Science Section.

With the pointing systems and receivers now being validated, we also are starting to use the 60-foot dish antenna for detecting astronomical radio source objects and the Milky Way at 1.4 GHz. We currently are using a SpectraCyber 1420 MHz Hydrogen Line Spectrometer. And we are starting to try RASDR4 (Radio Astronomy Software Defined Radio). A 1.4 GHz feed designed by Steve Plock is at the focus.

Jupiter Radio Science Experiment "Radio Jove":
20.1 MHz monitoring of Jupiter and its moon Io, using a 2-element phased dipole antenna - currently down, pending repair of the receiver. [Aug. 18. 2018]

Experiments in Colorado Springs:

430 MHz drift scan

Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance Monitor (SID):
- 25 kHz VLF Solar flare monitoring

More information about our currently running experiments