The Radio Sky and How to Observe It
We have learned a great deal about our universe not only by looking at the sky through optical telescopes but also by listening to it! Although in the past most of the great discoveries have been made by professional radio astronomers using large radio te
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Jeff Lashley
The Radio Sky and How to Observe It with 125 Illustrations
Jeff Lashley 67 Sapcote Drive Melton Mowbray Leicestershire LE13 1HG Series Editor Dr. Mike Inglis, BSc, MSc, Ph.D. Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society Suffolk County Community College New York, USA [email protected]
ISSN 1611-7360 ISBN 978-1-4419-0882-7 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-0883-4 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0883-4 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, se rvice marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Cover illustration: Details in radiation belts close to Jupiter are mapped from measurements that NASA's Cassini spacecraft made of radio emission from high-energy electrons moving at nearly the speed of light within the belts. The three views show the belts at different points in Jupiter's 10-hour rotation. A picture of Jupiter is superimposed to show the size of the belts relative to the planet. Cassini's radar instrument, operating in a listen-only mode, measured the strength of microwave radio emissions at a frequency of 13.8 gigahertz (13.8 billion cycles per second or 2.2-cm wavelength). The results indicate that the region near Jupiter is one of the harshest radiation environments in the Solar System. Image Credit: NASA/JPL Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To Irene and Christian, my greatest supporters
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For most people, amateur astronomy means observing celestial objects in visible light, using the naked eye, binoculars, or an optical telescope. Even for many amateur astronomers electronics is a black art, a subject too difficult to comprehend. Fear not – all is not that bad! This book does not assume you know anything about electronics. If you do, that’s a bonus, and some parts of this book will not be new to you. Even if you have been involved in electronics or radio, probably radio astronomy is a new area for you. The emphasis throughout is about understanding how radio equipment works, what building blocks are needed, and about construction techniques. Once you grasp these initial basic concepts, it lays the foundation to taking your radio projects to the next level. There is very little equipment commercially available for amateur radi
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