Deep Space Exploration Society (DSES)

We are now on Groups.io please join if interested: DSES Groups.io
A successful Open House was held on September 16th, read all about it here.
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For more information about us, you can email us at information(at)dses.science.

For our latest activities, see our DSES Posts, and see the News & Announcements column at the right of the page.

You can read our information brochure.

If you are interested, you can watch a DSES Open House video presentation by Bill Miller which highlights what we have done through 2020 (about 56 minutes).

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We receive support from Bottom Line Technologies, https://www.bltinc.com, who have provided funds for our antenna site Internet access. 

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2023 Observation/ 60-Foot Antenna Feed Schedule 

    • Now through ~April 15, 2022: 1420 MHz feed for Radio Astronomy.
    • April 15 – 24, 2022: 1296 MHz feed for EME contest weekend.
    • after April 24, 2022: 1420 MHz feed for Radio Astronomy.

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Meeting Notice

Since the Covid-19 pandemic  we have been conducting our engineering and science meetings online virtually.  Email announcements are sent to the members for each meeting. Meetings are also announced in our activities and news column at the right of the page.  If you would like information to participate, please contact us at our email address above.
 

Health Safety Notice

 
In the best interest of the DSES organization and respect for our member’s health and safety, we ask that members inform the DSES Board at our email address, information(at)dses.science, or call or email a Board member directly, to inform us if you know you have been exposed to an infected person or have been infected with the COVID-19  virus;  and if this is the case, we ask that you refrain from going to the Plishner site or other group gatherings.  When you have either tested negative or cleared fourteen days of self-quarantine, please let us know before you have contact with other DSES members. This may sound invasive to your privacy and freedom, but this is not a normal time and not a normal virus. Many of our members are in that vulnerable category over age 60 and have family members with pre-existing conditions.  Please respect their health and protect our members by allowing them to decide how and when they want to socialize with others that may carry the virus during this pandemic.  No doubt some of us will become infected, but let’s all work hard together to keep the virus out of our organization.  We will continue to hold virtual video meetings and will be judicious with site work trips to minimize contact until the danger of infection is past.

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Introduction

The Deep Space Exploration Society is a Colorado based nonprofit organization dedicated to practical astronomy and space science education for students, the general public, and society members.

Our major project is restoring and operating a 60-foot dish antenna for radio astronomy and amateur radio experimenting.  The site is located in Kiowa County, in Colorado. Since 2009 our volunteer members have been working hard to restore and modernize the antenna and its support facilities.  In addition we support radio astronomy and amateur radio projects with smaller antennas.  And we support educational outreach.

ASTRONOMY

We accomplished our first successful scientific measurements of galactic neutral hydrogen (HI) at 1.4 GHz in August 2016.  In 2018 we began undertaking systematic neutral hydrogen measurements of our Milky Way galaxy.  Highlights of our current astronomical work include:

  • Higher resolution mapping of the Milky Way using the 1420 MHz HI hydrogen radio spectral line. 
  • 1420 MHz HI hydrogen Doppler shift measurements for galactic mass and position studies.
  • Detecting and measuring pulsars.
  • Using SpectraCyber and SDR receivers.
  • Publishing our work in  amateur radio astronomy journals. and participating in conferences.

A significant technical accomplishment is the development of computer-based control systems for accurately pointing the dish antenna to celestial coordinates.

We conduct other radio astronomy experiments, including:

  • Joint observations for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) with the 40-foot radio telescope dish antenna at the Greenbank Observatory in West Virginia
  • Radio science observations of Jupiter and its moon Io
  • Solar Wind Observations using the Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance Monitor (SID) at Very Low Frequencies (VLF)
  • Meteor Scatter

AMATEUR RADIO

Our Amateur Radio work includes:

  • Engineering design, building, and coding
  • EME Moon Bounce 
  • Tropospheric Scatter 
  • HF operating

OUTREACH

  • We host an Open House at our radio astronomy antenna site for the local communities each August, during the Perseid Meteor Shower. [Note in 2020, due to the Covid 19 pandemic, we did not hold an on-site open house.]
  • We have been sponsoring prizes and participating as judges in the Pikes Peak Regional Science Fair since 2019.
  • We are developing our ability and are actively starting to support student projects.
  • We give presentations to interested local groups about our work.

Our Website

This is our site for sharing information about the science and engineering support at the Deep Space Exploration Society.

Our website is continuing to be developed.

  • We post news about our progress restoring and modernizing our radio telescope site. We are now operational, though much infrastructure  continues to be done.  All posts are placed in our DSES Posts section.
  • Our posts include updates about our science work.
    •  A dedicated section for Science Updates now exists.  As our science work progresses we may reorganize the Science sub-sections, to make search and access easier.
  • Announcements about our regularly scheduled monthly science and engineering meetings are posted in the Announcement and News section in the column at the right side of the website.  We post our other announcements there too, including of our educational events and regular dates for working at our radio telescope site.
  • Our Education Page currently has suggested links and some suggested reading.

Membership

Membership in DSES runs from the start of each calendar year.    Dues are $50 / year for voting members and $20 / year for non-voting members.

Please see our Membership Page for more information and instructions on how to pay membership dues: Membership Information – Deep Space Exploration Society

You can donate or pay membership dues with this PayPal link. You can use a PayPal account or your credit card.

You also can contribute to the Deep Space Exploration Society when you purchase on Amazon Smile. Go to their link “smile.amazon.com”, and select DSES in the Supporting menu.

Last updated November 26, 2023.  (Gary WA2JQZ)