Physics Roof Radio Astronomy Array
Our purpose was to use radio astronomy as a means of carrying out public science education. Radio Astronomy has certain advantages for our purposes, including the fact that observing programs are unaffected by weather or daylight. Automation permits us to stay indoors, rather than freeze our bodies in the -40C Alberta winters.
With the advent of Canadian Direct To Home satellite television broadcasting, we saw many large C band dishes falling into disrepair/disuse. Rather than see this valuable resource go to waste, we started collecting these unused dishes & hardware, with the intent of building our own long baseline interferometers. Unfortunately, most of us have small yards, so putting multiple dishes into our back yards became problematic.
We approached the Department of Physics of the University of Alberta about the possibility of hosting these recycled dishes on the roof of their building, and were met with good support.
We moved 20 dishes to the Physics roof and managed to build and install several mounts for the 12' dishes we collected. The original idea was that they would be for our own use and that of U of A physics students. Other universities, such as the University of Calgary Radio Astronomy Society, Berkeley U and the University of Indianapolis have carried out similar projects.
A total of 4 dishes were erected on their mounts. Conduit, wiring, and receiver station were installed inside the upper floor of the building, which allowed us to test Howard Gibbins dish by observing radio emissions from the Sun and Moon.
Paul Campbell & Robert Rolf amongst the dish pile.
Mounts being prepared to attach the dishes in the array.
At this point, we received word that a new air conditioning system was to be installed in the building which meant we had to begin removing some equipment. Ultimately, the University decided to re-roof the building, resulting in us having to remove everything we had placed on the roof. A year or two later, after re-roofing the building, the Physics building was torn down. It was a disappointing end to this particular project. An estimated 1000 plus volunteer hours had been expended on it.
Undeterred we stored the equipment and carried on with a new project, working with 15 Edmonton area Grade 9 Science classes to use FM radios to detect meteors. See Project 4 (when it is available).
Howard Gibbins dish, which was successfully used to test our equipment. It was able to detect radio emissions from the Sun and Moon. The intention was to use this large dish along with others in an array on the Physics roof to detect far more distant objects such as supernova remnants.