News

RADIO ASTRONOMY GROUP 2012 GENERAL MEETING

A date for your diaries: Saturday 2012-10-27

The 2012 RAG General Meeting will be held at the National Space Centre at Leicester.

The keynote speakers are:

Professor Andrew Lyne and Doctor Chris North

Details are in the flyer which can be downloaded from here

The Booking form is now available. Download it here.

Radio Astronomy Group

You have landed on the BAA RAG Web pages. The site content has been totally rewritten with additional new content added on a regular basis.We would welcome details of projects that you are working on or any observations that you have made. Please contact the webmaster for further information.

You will see that we also have a Twitter account. We will use this technology to notify group members of events, updates and observations. You can follow us on Twitter - the account name is @BAARAG.

We also run a discussion group hosted by Yahoo. We will also be developing this over the next few months - you can subscribe to the group to receive e-mails by sending an e-mail to baa-rag-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, you do not need to be a Yahoo group member. If you are already a Yahoo group member the group link is http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/baa-rag/

Aims

Many amateur astronomers who are interested in what happens outside of the optical spectrum are put off making radio observations because they believe that large parabolic aerials and complicated electronic circuits are required to receive the very faint signals arriving from space. They are put off, too, in thinking that the radio astronomer’s output comprises nothing more than reams of paper on which traces akin to squiggly lines are recorded. It is true that there are aspects of radio astronomy that need big dishes and sophisticated electronics, but there are others that can be observed with relatively simple equipment.
The aim of these web-pages will be to show that there are aspects of radio astronomy that can be observed using relatively simple equipment, and that observations of scientific merit can be achieved by modest observatories that can be accommodated in an average-sized back garden. The foundations of radio astronomy were laid down by amateurs as well as professionals and the rapid developments in electronics and computing over recent years makes the building of a personal radio astronomy observatory both feasible and affordable.
For those who have no wish to build equipment the intention is to provide a range of instruments available 'off-the-shelf'. Of course, some construction will be needed, in the same way that an optical telescope has to be set up on a mount or protected from the elements, but the aim is to avoid the need for constructing electronic circuits.
Others will want to take a more hands-on approach, perhaps starting with quite simple constructions and progressing upwards. This may be particularly relevant for younger members. The Group's aim here is to provide information on projects of all levels, links to what others have done, and a discussion board for exchanging information, experiences and observations.

Contributions

We always appreciate feedback on the work of the Group and suggestions as to what should be included on this site. If you would like to help in any way please drop a mail to the RAG Coordinator. RAG is not a collection of experts in radio astronomy but of people who are simply interested in the subject and would like to learn more, perhaps build equipment or just make observations. Your contributions will help others.

UKRAA

The UK Radio Astronomy Association (UKRAA) was set up in 2008 with the support of the Radio Astronomy Group of the British Astronomical Association to handle the development and sale of radio astronomy equipment developed by the BAA RAG.
The UKRAA is a charitable company limited by guarantee.
For information on the UK Radio Astronomy Association, please visit their website at www.ukraa.com

Website Update

A new major section on the Detection of Meteors by RADAR is available here.

A very interesting paper on the science of monitoring SIDs by C. T.More, A.K.Sharma, R.V.Bhonsle and K.J.W.Lynn has been published as part of the proceedings of the Australian Space Science Conference. The Adobe PDF document can be downloaded from here.

Calendar

Radio Astronomy Talks

2012-05-01 Open University Astronomy Club - Paul Hyde

Please notify the webmaster of any Radio Astronomy events that you would like to see publicised

Change Log

2012 April 26 - Added 2012 Mar VLF Report by John Cook

2012 March 29 - Added 2012 Jan and Feb VLF Reports by John Cook

2012 February 4 - Added Detection of Meteors by RADAR by Dr David Morgan

2012 January 30 - Added December 2012 VLF Report by John Cook

2012 January 13 - Added BRAMS meteor Radar by Dr David Morgan

2011 December 09 - Added Paul Hydes RAG Update Archive in the Downloads section

2011 December 09 - Added Antennas for Meteor Radar by Dr David Morgan

2011 November 26 - Added Meteor Radar SDR Receiver by Dr David Morgan

2011 November 8 - Added Radio Sources Paper and HTML by Dr David Mogan

2011 August 8 - Added 'An SDR Radio Telescope' by Dr David Morgan

2011 July 23 - Added 'A Radio Telescope Pre-Amplifier Head' and 'Construction of a 3m Parabolic dish for 1420MHz' - both papers by Dr David Morgan

2011 July 18 - Added 'Amateur Radio Astronomy Measurements of
Galactic Neutral Hydrogen Distribution' paper by Dr David Mogan

2011 July 15 - Added new paper 'Detection of Extra Galactic Radio Source Virgo A' by Dr David Morgan

2011 April 5 - Added John Cooks Revised VLF Report for 2011 February and Colin Clements 81MHz Total Power Receiver Project

2010 June 15 - Site updated

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