Comments on Solar Radio Astronomy

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p_zetner
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Comments on Solar Radio Astronomy

Post by p_zetner »

Greetings All.

There's been some interest expressed in solar radio astronomy so I thought I'd throw in my two cents' worth. Many of you probably realize that there is an entire chapter (Chapter 13) dedicated to solar radio astronomy in Christian's book "Solar Astronomy: Observing, imaging and studying the Sun". I take responsibility for this chapter since what started out as an exercise in French to English translation ended up in a complete revision and rewrite of the chapter! There were quite a number of errors in the original French publication and the entire analysis of the Lucie radio telescope measurement was incorrect. I went through the original data and re-analyzed it correctly so the newly written English chapter is (hopefully!) pretty free from error. The equipment part of the chapter is almost solely devoted to the Lucie type of radio telescope, a repurposed satellite dish operating in the microwave portion of the spectrum. There are, however, a number of other radio observing techniques in use by amateurs.

My originally submitted version of Chapter 13 was quite a bit more extensive since I am interested in observing the Sun at much lower radio frequencies (tens of MHz) than the Lucie experiment (~ 11 GHz), largely because I expect there to be more radio action there. However, publication limitations meant that this extra discussion of lower frequency, longer wavelength techniques had to be cut. I thought I would upload the unpublished part of the chapter here. It might make a useful starting point for someone interested in looking at the Sun's radio emissions and it shows the direction I'm taking in my own radio studies. I've tried to cover the generalities as well as some of the specific technical details which can help an amateur to set up a radio frequency observatory. There are a number of references included, most of them still available online. If someone needs a pdf document not currently available online, please let me know and I can send it to you or upload it here as well.

The unpublished document is a bit "rough around the edges" but is pretty self contained with some references to the other sections of the "Solar Astronomy" book. There is a lot of disparate information on the web so I thought this might point the way to some fruitful project ideas. Someday, I may work it up into a better manuscript but have no immediate plans.

Cheers.
Peter


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Re: Comments on Solar Radio Astronomy

Post by Montana »

What a gem Peter :movie

I'll put a copy in the library too :)

Alexandra


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marktownley
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Re: Comments on Solar Radio Astronomy

Post by marktownley »

Thanks Peter, a great reference.


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http://brierleyhillsolar.blogspot.co.uk/
Solar images, a collection of all the most up to date live solar data on the web, imaging & processing tutorials - please take a look!
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