The 2011 SARA Regional Conference at TAO 
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Hello - Question
Hello, I'm an amatuer astronomer with two optical telescopes. I have two old satellite dishes on my house that are not being used. Eventually they will be taken down; instead of throwing them away I would like to reuse them somehow. I wondered if I could modify them to use as radio telescopes one day.
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Homemade interferometer
Submitted by dbwestman on Wed, 11/25/2009 - 23:06.
Yes, you can use these two satellite dishes as a rudimentary interferometer. The resolution of this interferometer will be determined by the distance between the two elements, not by the diameters of the elements. The main thing you need to do is to connect them to a correlator so that the signals combine in phase with each other. Then you can integrate the combined signal as the earth rotates to produce a combined map of the area of the sky at which the antennas are pointed. I intend to discuss this topic more during my presentation to the Western Conference of SARA at Stanford Univ., during the weekend of March 20-21, 2010.
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Using old satellite dishes
Submitted by melindalord on Fri, 11/20/2009 - 22:10.
The Itty Bitty Telescope (IBT) is a fun and simple radio telescope to build using satellite dishes.
You can find instructions on how to build one at the NRAO website http://www.gb.nrao.edu/epo/ambassadors/ibtmanualshort.pdf SARA members Kerry Smith and Chuck Forster designed the unit and it has been used to demonstrate basic radio astronomy. The SARA Store has a CD and DVD set from Kerry Smith and Jon Wallace with loads of information on how to use and demonstrate the IBT.
We have taken our IBT to star parties where kids and adults alike are curious about how it works and what we can detect with radio astronomy.
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