DSES Science Meeting, October 22, 2018

DSES Science Meeting 10-22-2018                   Meeting Notes by Bill Miller

Location Rich Russel’s Residence, Colorado Springs

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.

DSES Science Meeting Presentation October 22, 2018 [Please click to view.]

 

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.

 

Skip Crilly 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
    1. Started with Floyd’s list
    2. Added the 1420 MHz sources from the book “Tools of Radio Astronomy” by K Rohlfs and T Wilson.
    3. 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.
    1. Used Spectra Cyber
    2. Used system 1 pointing
    3. Used the new setup with the cavity filter
    4. Limit switches are set at +/-15 ether way of north. CCW to 345.  CW to 015.
    5. Gary got great pictures of the event.
    6. Need screen print capability to capture the Spectra Cyber parameters display.
    7. The Spectra Cyber SW is easy to take the data and use it.
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
  • Next Observation Trip. Need a couple of nights.