Poor Man's Radio Telescope

Step 3: A test run of the Sun

I tried pointing the dish at the sun. As you can see in the picture to the right the meter was pegged. It only did this when the dish was pointing at the sun. I deduced that, "Yes indeed, it was picking up the sun." Note the dB knob turned all the way down. It seems the sun packs a mean punch!

Comments

[myamiphil]

http://www.gb.nrao.edu/epo/ambassadors/ibtmanualshort.pdf

[rod_sutter]

I need a little help, im building a lbt can you give me more detail instruction on how to power the satellite finder with the 12 volt converter, and how can I hook up my laptop to the satellite finder to record the signals that come from the object were looking at.

[z0rb]

Well both the satellite finder and the LNB (Low Noise Block) are powered from the same source.

The satellite finder looks for a voltage (typically between 12-18 volts) coming in the receiver side of the meter. The link below spells it out a little. You apply the positive side of the voltage to the center connector and the negative voltage to the connector’s jacket. The little coily thing near the positive terminal of the voltage source is a coil of wire to stop the RF (Radio Frequency) from getting into the power supply. Pretty much any RF choke will do. My question to you is. What kind of power supply are you using? What kind of satellite meter are you using? It would also help to know what kind of dish and feed horn you are using.

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc216/MightyZ0rb/meter.jpg

This is a little more difficult. It also depends on what type of satellite meter you have. If it is like the one above, then there are two possible routes you can take.

The first involves opening the meter up and fastening leads to the wires that go to the actual meter portion of the sat finder. These leads would then be hooked up to a data logging voltmeter. I use a radio shack one found at the link below.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103962

The second method is not nearly as accurate but it would be a cheap way to get started. The particular satellite finder above has a little piezo element that chirps when a satellite is found. The knob on the front of the meter can vary the intensity of this. If you were to use a spectral analysis program. Found here (it’s free)

http://www.qsl.net/padan/spectran.html

And tape your PC’s microphone to the back of the meter it will show you when you detect something.

This is just my 10,000 foot view of your situation. Without knowing exactly the components your working with it’s difficult to advise the best way to approach this.

However I hope this helps, and if you wish to pick my brain further, shoot me an email via my website.