Re: Pail of Milky Way Horn Radio Telescope

[Glen Langston]

Hi Marcus Leech (and Muller),

Well you beat me to it!

It’s great that you can pre-confirm my results.  I’ll have to look at the
rest of your memos.   Do you mind if we cross-post your memo CERRA memo,
as a LightWork memo too?  Maybe it will be better to just reference your memos
on the LightWork page.  Just thinking while typing…

You produced a beautiful spectrum of the Milky Way, if you love that kind of 
thing, like I do!
Calibrating, by looking at the Ground, is pretty reliable and easy.

Cheers

Glen


> On May 2, 2023, at 7:03 PM, Marcus D. Leech <patchvonbraun@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 02/05/2023 18:58, Marcus Müller wrote:
>> Hey Glen,
>> 
>> this is really cool stuff!
>> 
>> Tried to give this a bit of reach on Mastodon [1], but I'm far from the 
>> audience I used to have on twitter.
>> 
>> It's pretty cool that a galvanized pail does the job so well, would have 
>> thought zinc wouldn't be low-loss enough a surface coating, but was proven 
>> wrong by awesome results :) The best case of being wrong!
>> 
>> I especially like that this is a solution that needs so little "craftiness" 
>> and seems quite robust. Just drill a hole, watch (and then obviously like) a 
>> few videos and send Glen an email to get a free feed :D
>> 
>> If I had one complaint, it's that you promise a shopping list in the 
>> appendix – but there's no appendix!
>> 
>> I'd also state very early in the guide (maybe actually with a flashy yellow 
>> "sticker" on the title page?) that it comes with video documentation (30 min 
>> in total[2]). I think that's quite a relief to a teacher who doesn't want to 
>> risk building something new based on text only, especially when it involves 
>> mechanical work!
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Marcus
>> 
>> PS: I think if you're really going to leave it out in the weather, maybe add 
>> a Polymeric Low-Absorption Small-Thickness Inherently Costefficient Best-fit 
>> Antenna enGulfing (PLASTICBAG) radome?
>> 
>> 
>> [1] https://mastodon.social/@funkylab/110301361379949802
>> [2] For those wondering: these videos:
>> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFMYhHhJW1VDYESTcHJIiwNbRQXWpFlyF
>> 
>> On 02.05.23 16:53, Glen Langston wrote:
>>> Hello Aficionados!
>>> 
>>> We’ve just released a marvelous summary of how to build a “Pail of Milky 
>>> Way”
>>> horn radio telescope.   This is described in LightWork memo 32.
>>> 
>>> https://github.com/WVURAIL/lightwork/blob/master/memos/LightWorkMemo032-PailOfMilkyWay-r5.pdf
>>>  
>>> 
>>> The memo concludes with a plot of one day’s observations, showing
>>> what you can see with a horn radio telescope.   The Doppler shifted
>>> Cygnus and Perseus Spiral arms of the Milky Way are visible.
>>> 
>>> Comments and improvements welcomed.
>>> 
>>> Data are all obtained using Gnuradio designs available from the DSPIRA web 
>>> site.
>>> https://github.com/WVURAIL/gr-radio_astro
>>> 
>>> Thanks to Kevin Bandura at WVU and the Green Bank Observatory Staff.
>>> 
>>> Cheers
>>> 
>>> Glen
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> Some of this reminds me of the memo I published 1.5 years ago on a similar 
> subject:
> 
> http://www.ccera.ca/files/memos/ccera-memo-0014.pdf
> 
> 
>