1. Radio Astronomy: An Informal Talk Presented to the Society of Physics Students Northern Virginia Community College 19 November by Prof. Harold Geller, GMU

2. What I’ll talk about Telescopes Electromagnetic waves Radioastronomy basics NRAO at Green Bank, West Virginia Small Radio Telescope at George Mason University

3. What does a telescope do? Collect electromagnetic waves –Collecting ability proportional to the square of the diameter of the objective Resolve electromagnetic sources –Related to the atmosphere, wavelength and curvature of the objective Magnify surfaces of planets and the Moon –Magnification only of Moon, Sun and planets

4. Looking Beyond the Eyes

5. Optical Telescopes Reflector Refractor

6. Different Views of Sun Sun in Hydrogen-alphaSun in X-ray

7. Radio Astronomy Basics

8. A Little More Detail

9. Jansky’s Original Radiotelescope

10. Grote Reber’s Telescope

11. 170 foot Diameter Radio- telescope at Green Bank, WV

12. The 100- meter Green Bank Telescope

13. Even Bigger than you Think

14. Jupiter in Radio

15. Saturn in Radio

16. 3C296 Radio/Optical Composite

17. A Vision for George Mason (based upon Univ. Indianapolis)

18. Small Radio Telescope Justification Radio science observations in the L-band –L-band lies in the 1400-1427 MHz region of the electromagnetic spectrum –detection of what astronomers call the 21-cm line of hydrogen this is a portion of the hydrogen spectrum, in the radio region of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is generated by the neutral hydrogen clouds in the interstellar medium

19. Small Radio Telescope Justification Observations in C-band, which is 4313- 4338 MHz and 3788-3813 MHz –Radio science observations in the C-band allow for the radio emission examination of the moon, which acts as a body at a temperature of 200 K. –Students will be able to scan the moon, and detect the estimated 6000 joules of energy from the lunar surface.

20. GMU SRT Background Funding –National Science Foundation education portion of grant won by Dr. Rita Sambruna Order History –ordered first week of June 2002 stated 12 week delivery time –received 15 October 2002 damaged antenna

21. GMU SRT Background Part II Order History –boxes damaged –FedEx insurance inspector called and visited to assess damage - refused claim –replacement parts to be shipped by vendor Base assembled on roof –1 November 2002 Remaining electronics and replacement antenna parts received 30 January 2003

22. Did You Say Fragile?

23. Picking Up the Pieces on the Roof

24. Whistle While You Work

25. Tolerance

26. Cleanup On The Roof

27. The Base Of SRT

28. Servo Motors Attachment

29. Servos with Ring Assembly

30. Dish/Receiver Assembly

31. Readying for Final Mechanical Assembly

32. From Mechanical to Electrical

33. Assembled and Ready to Test

34. Sample Data

35. Even Smaller - Radio Jove

36. Small Radio Science Demonstration Projects Undergraduate research –Steve Richardson web site built with some results from data acquired using U of Indianapolis –http://physics.gmu.edu/~arichar6/radio/index.html prepared presentation for GMU “innovations” fair prepared presentation for CPAC meeting at Bucknell University

37. Really Smoothing

38. Playing With The Data

39. A Potpourri Of Color

40. Family Portrait (2001 conference)

41. Radio Astronomy Observatory at George Mason University

42. Looking To The Future

43. Future GMU Observatory

44. OnLine References http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/intro/image.index.html http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/intro/faq.html http://donald.phast.umass.edu/~fcrao/education/re port1.html http://www.haystack.mit.edu/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radioastronomy/ http://www.bambi.net/sara.html http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/

45. Book References Radio Astronomy by John D. Kraus An Introduction to Radio Astronomy by Bernard Burke The Amateur Radio Astronomer’s Handbook by John Potter Shields Radio Astronomy for the Amateur by David Heiserman Radio Astronomy (Above and Beyond) by Adele Richardson

46. Many Thanks Rita Sambruna (GMU) Maria Dworzecka (GMU) Justin Brown (GMU) Dan Thomas (GMU) Kathy Santiago (NVCC) John Avellone Christopher Helm National Science Foundation (NSF) MIT Haystack Observatory