Tune in the cosmos: getting into amateur radio astronomy

Whole Earth Review, Fall, 1990 by Jeff Lichtman

At no wavelength does the radio sky look like the optical sky. None of the few thousand stars we can see at night are radio emitters of any significance.

To a radio astronomer at the outer reaches of the solar system, the earth would appear as the strongest radio source in the sky at 60 Hz. Those radio signals originate in the auroral regions, but the-signals ore not observable down here on the earth's surface because such radio waves cannot penetrate the electrically charged ionosphere in the upper reaches of our atmosphere. It is an odd coincidence that worldwide sources of commercial alternating current (AC) are distributed at 50 or 60 Hz, a frequency which happens to coincide with the earth's natural frequency of burst radiation.

The Invisible Universe Revealed Gerrit L. Verschuur 1987; 262 pp. $24 ($26.50 postpaid) from Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 44 Hartz Way, Secaucus, NJ 7094; 201/348-4033 (or Whole Earth Access)

Jeff Lichtman is a founder, and now president, of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers (SARA). For more information, and/or help starting a radio astronomy project, contact SARA Membership Services, 247 North Linden Street, Massapequa, NY 11758.