Listening to Jupiter on a DIY Radio

By Jove, he built a radio!

If you want to get started with radio astronomy, Jupiter is one of the easiest celestial objects to hear from Earth. [Vasily Ivanenko] wanted to listen, and decided to build a modular radio receiver for the task. So far he’s written up six of the eight planned blog posts.

The system uses an LNA, a direct conversion receiver block, and provides audio output to a speaker, output to a PC soundcard, and a processed connection for an analog to digital converter. The modules are well-documented and would be moderately challenging to reproduce.

NASA maintains a list of receivers suitable for Jovian listening, although you can use basically any receiver that covers the right frequency band. If you want to hear what the giant planet sounds like, check out the video, below.

If you are interested in a cheap way to listen to some of our other cosmic neighbors, you might think about converting a satellite dish. Or, you can try something smaller.

Filed under: radio hacks

from Hackaday http://ift.tt/2fBXSfs
via IFTTT