The Society for Physics Students has an opportunity to supplement the teachings of the curriculum and offer a local observatory and research station to interested students and faculty through building a radio telescope from a satellite dish. Visible wavelengths compose only a small part of the stellar spectrum, while radio astronomy compliments what can be seen by probing some invisible radiation of celestial bodies.

Students will build and assemble the analyzing and amplifying components necessary to the radio telescope, which is to be stationed on the roof of Bennett Hall in the coming months. As of early December, we have purchased a dish and amplifiers and spectrum analyzers for the 406.7MHz emission band. We are working on designing and building a rooftop mount which will allow us mobility in observing a large region of the sky while remaining steady and sturdy to endure the Maine weather. The telescope will sweep the sky for signals from distant objects of interest, for example, pulsars. Pulsars are massive rotating bodies, believed to be collapsed stars which were once much bigger than our Sun. Emitting radiation in very precisely timed pulses, these detectable signals can be used to determine the age of the pulsar and the distance that the pulsar is from Earth (the closest pulsar to the Earth is about 280 light years away, and only discovered in 1993 due in part to its weak signal). Another research opportunity is in the observation of solar activity in the radio spectrum. The effects of solar flares reach from disrupting power grids on Earth to knocking satellites out of orbit to creating the spectacle we call the Northern Lights. Exhibiting periodically in 11-year cycles, solar activity will reach a peak in 2011 providing the best opportunity to research.

This radio telescope will augment curricular and co-curricular opportunities that students will have in the field of radio astronomy at the University of Maine, and be sure to attract the interests of amateur radio astronomers in the community since this will be the only radio observatory in the state (only a handful of observatories exist in New England). Additional experiments, such as measuring Doppler shift of the Earth through the galaxy to calculate velocity will become possible once the observatory is established and additional funding allows the operation of multiple receivers.

For more information about this project, officer contact information may be found on our contacts page.