Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers

October 2nd, 2010
Sponsored by
The Society of Amateur Radio Astronomy and the Chiefland Star Party Group

This event will be held October 2nd, 2010 CSPG observing field located at 5330 NW 52nd Court Chiefland Florida 32626 starting at 10:00 a.m. Coffee and snacks will be available at 9:00 a.m. This event will be held at the facilities of the CSPG observing field.

By: Julian Jove

The SARA 2010 Annual Conference was held at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) at Green Bank West Virginia just about 1 gazillion miles from anywhere. If you do not believe me, haul out GoogleEarth and go to 38-25-51.11N : 79-48-58.63W geographic coordinates. This location is in what the Federal Communications Commission calls a National Radio Quiet Zone. It

There is still time to register for the 2010 SARA Annual Meeting and Registration at Green Bank, West Virginia July 4 to 7. We have great speakers lined up covering a wide range of topics from how to get started in radio astronomy to advanced talks such as Phase Switched Interferometer.

During May 14 to 16, the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers will have an exhibit at the annual Hamvention in Dayton, OH. One of the biggest gatherings of radio amateurs in the world, this event draws thousands of visitors each year.

SARA will share an exhibit booth with the Radio JOVE Project and the Interactive NASA Space Physics Ionosphere Radio Experiments (INSPIRE) project. Look for us at Booth #421. (See http://www.hamvention.org/about.php for more details.)

By: Whitham D. Reeve, Anchorage, Alaska USA

This summary is from my hand-written notes and includes numerous opinions of my own.

Approximately 32 people attended the SARA 2010 Western Conference at Stanford University in Stanford, California on March 20 and 21, 2010. Bill and Melinda Lord did a wonderful job of organizing the conference. Deborah Scherrer of Stanford University was our excellent and generous host and provided a conference room in the Physics/Astrophysics Building. There was plenty of good food and drinks and by all appearances and comments the conference was a great success.

Bill Lord, in his inimitable way, opened the conference and was quickly followed by Deborah Scherrer, who let us know that we had to keep the destruction of the facilities to a minimum or else we would get the bill. The university has strict polices against spilling coffee on the conference room carpet. Her warning helped because, as far as I know, there were no serious infractions and everyone left happy and nobody went to jail.

Charitarth Vyas of Surat, Gujarat in India is the newest SARA grant recipient. Charitarth along with his four classmates; Suresh Kumar, Paladiya Kulip, Goswami Keyur and Akashrup Banerjee will build a Radio Jove receiver as part of their Undergraduate level project. They have specifically allotted time along with their regular studies to do integrated M.Sc with physics to do various types of projects. The main aim behind the project is to know the radio telescope and radio astronomy as a whole starting with the very basics to the advanced level by analyzing the data collected.

2010 Annual Conference Abstracts

The Annual Conference to be held at Green Bank, West Virginia July 4 to 7, 2010 will feature the following presentations in addition to the Keynote presentation by Dr. James Thieman and the Radio Jove team.

Interfacing A Pan/Tilt Mount To Planetarium Software
By Paul Oxley
Abstract:
The paper describes a system that interfaces between a pan and tilt mount and readily available planetarium software using the Astronomy Common Object Model (ASCOM) standards. The system uses a driver created in C# language that works with the ASCOM platform to receive position commands from Planetarium software such as “The Sky” or “Cartes du Ciel.” A PIC microprocessor is used via the USB port to generate the necessary control voltages for the Pan and Tilt motors. The paper also describes the challenges faced when developing a real time control system using techniques such as multi-threading and multiple processor interfaces.

Per the SARA By-Laws this is the official call for nominations for SARA officers and board If you are interested in running for office and would like to know more about the positions, please contact a board member or the President Tom Crowley. The requirement to be on the board is to attend the board meetings at the annual meeting. If you will be unable to attend the annual meeting, then the director at Large position may be for you. This position is a full board position only attending the annual meeting is not required.

Stanford’s Deborah Scherrer (who is also a SARA member) was one of 10 NASA scientists who toured Morocco for 2 weeks, giving all day science workshop events to middle school Moroccan children. The tour was done under the auspices of the United Nations (International Space Weather Initiative) and authorized by the King of Morocco. Funding for the trip came from Grove of Hope, a non-profit formed by several NASA/JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) scientists. Organizer was Kamal Oudrhiri of JPL. Here is her report on that trip.

We now have the presentation abstracts for the Western Conference to be held 20-21 March, 2010 at Stanford University. Thanks to David Westman, we have some really great speakers and topics scheduled. There is still time to register, just go here for details http://www.radio-astronomy.org/?q=node/134. 2010 SARA Western Conference Stanford University, California Presentation Abstracts Application of the UK RAA Very Low Frequency Receiver System Whitham D. Reeve Abstract: Members of the UK Radio Astronomy Association have been working on a VLF receiver system prototype design since 2006 and UK RAA now sells it in kit and built form. The system consists of three major components: VLF receiver, 0.4 m square loop antenna, and antenna tuning unit. A signal generator also is available for testing and tuning the receiver. This paper discusses: 1) Receiver system architecture and characteristics; 2) Kit construction details; and 3) Performance in my observatory in Anchorage, Alaska USA.