Mr. Glogowski's Radio Astronomy
In the early 1900's the only way to look at the heavens was with a conventional light telescope. Today we have the Hubble orbiting telescope, x-ray telescopes, gamma ray telescopes, and radio telescopes.
Radio astronomy is the study of a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum which we commonly call the radio spectrum. Radio astronomy studies the spectrum from about 18 kilohertz to about 30 gigahertz -- which is a range of about 1 x 10 ^6 hertz! Back in the early 1900's we knew about radio frequency (RF) but no one would have ever hypothesized that RF radiation was being produce by tens of billions of extraterrestrial sources and that many of these waves were passing right by the earth. Not until Karl G. Jansky happened upon some very strange noise.
Karl Jansky (1905-1950) was a radio engineer working at Bell Telephone Laboratories studying radio frequency interference caused by thunderstorms. If you have ever tried to listen to an AM radio station during a thunderstorm you have noticed how "crackly" the station sounds. Jansky was trying to design an antenna that would not be effected by the static caused by thunderstorms and during his pursuit he discovered that some of the static that he was hearing was coming from an extraterrestrial source. Jansky observed that the source of the static changed very slowly, gradually rotating through 360 degrees in about a 24 hour period.
Jansky was able to rule out the source of the radio frequency as being the sun because the radiation peaked earlier each day and it did not correspond with the rotation of the earth around the sun. The radiation was coming from our solar systems movement around the Milky Way Galaxy. Confirmation of Jansky's discovery came a few years later right here in Illinois when Grote Reber (a radio engineer) built what looks like a modern radio satellite dish and picked up a strong signal along the plan of the Milky Way Galaxy. By 1944 he published the first radio map of the sky.
Here at Ridgewood High School we have a 4-meter radio telescope on top of our roof which was donated by the Andrew's Corporation. The electronics used to operate the telescope were purchased through a grant from the GTE Corporation. We have used the telescope to observe our sun, and the Milky Way's Galactic Nucleus, Sagittarius A. We also operate solar flare detection telescopes as well as a telescope to monitor Jupiter noise.
Soon you should be able to return to this site and download our data and use an interactive program to learn about radio astronomy. Please return soon!
If you are a teacher and and have any comments or questions fell free to contact me wglogowski@ridgenet.org
Created 12/99 by Glogowski