Site Engineering

Upcoming Activities

DSES will NOT have a meeting on July 26. The next meeting planned will be the Engineering Meeting on August 9, 2021, 6:30 MDT.

The Deep Space Exploration Society (DSES) will have its Open House, Saturday, August 7 starting at 10 AM at the Paul Plishner Radio Astronomy and Space Sciences Center, 9301 County Road 20 Haswell, Colorado. We should have several optical telescopes on site for viewing of the skies both day (Sun Filters) and night. We will have radio equipment on site for all our working science projects. A ham radio station using the DSES club call sign, K0PRT (Plishner Radio Telescope) will be on the air on all High Frequency radio bands. We also hope to have an amateur radio Oscar satellite station working as well. We have lots of parking space for RV’s, trailers, or trucks/cars but only 6 electrical plug-in spots. Please email us if you want to reserve an RV spot with electricity. We will start grilling hot dogs around 5PM Saturday. Be prepared for hot temps during the day and thunderstorms, rain, wind and maybe hail during late afternoon or evening. Mud boots may be nice to have if it rains. We will have several coolers of cold bottled water for those who need it. Organization email:information(at)dses.science.

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At this time we are holding our monthly meetings as virtual meetings. Our engineering meetings are normally held on the second Monday of each month. Our science meetings are held on the fourth Monday of each month. Start time is now 6:30 PM (Mountain Time). Email notifications are sent to members prior to the meetings. If you would like information to participate, please contact us at information(at)dses.science.

Work trips to the Haswell antenna site are generally 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. During the Covid-19 pandemic, work and science trips may be coordinated for other times. NOTE: Please coordinate with us before you go to the Plishner site, information(at)dses.science.

News

Rich Russel compiled all of our Science Meeting information located on our website in an easy to use Directory index. You can now get to it from our Science Menu tab at the top of any website page, or click the link DSES Science Meeting & Presentations Master Index

We now have posted the presentation slides and video of the DSES Science Meeting of May 24, 2021. Our Science Lead Rich Russel gave us a presentation about the science behind the Event Horizon radio telescope group's first successful imaging of a black hole (in M87) in 2019.

Skip Crilly wrote a paper which is now in ArXiv An Interstellar Communication Method: System Design and Observations, 8 May, 2021. The paper is available in PDF on our website on our Publications Page, Paper #32.

The DSES Science Meeting presentation slides of April 26, 2021 by Rich Russel are now posted on our website. (Video added May 3.)

2021 DSES Officers:
Myron Babcock - President & Treasurer
Gary Agranat - Vice President
Floyd Glick - Secretary

Our Minutes from our 2021 Annual Membership Meeting of April 19, with video, is now posted. Minutes by Bill Miller.

Elected this year to the DSES Board of Directors are:
Floyd Glick
Ray Uberecken
Don Latham
Floyd Glick is continuing his service after serving the past two years. Bill Miller and David Molter are retiring from serving. The elected members join Gary Agranat, Myron Babcock, Bob Haggart, and Bob Sayers who have been serving since last year. The Board of Directors serve for two years. Please welcome in the new Board, and please reach out to them as needed. Thank you each one for your service.

Website Update Notes

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

60-foot dish antenna:

Current main work with the 60-foot antenna is to develop our ability to detect pulsars. We are doing this at several wavelength bands. During the winter, work will continue with observing galactic hydrogen at 1420 MHz.

We are regularly using the 60 foot dish antenna for joint observing runs for SETI with Skip Crilly at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. These joint observations are discussed in several of Skip's presentation slides. Please see our presentations page.

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.

Experiments in Colorado Springs:

Drift scan survey of Milky Way of HI 1420 MHz spectral line.

Development of hardware/software and techniques for detecting pulsars.

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