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Not only my work involves astronomy, but so do my personal interests. I am interested in both amature radio and optical astronomy. However, without a optical telescope or a radio one (at the moment), my options are limited. So I am currently in the process of building my own radio telescope.

Radio Astronomy

My Work

My work as a research assistant has me working with the Square Kilometer Array (better know as SKA) group. The work I do involves the recording of the output voltages at multiple radio telescopes - mostly Australian ones, but some are oversea. These data are recorded to Apple Xraid drives (and some software raid drives at the moment) and those drives are then transported to the Swinburne Supercomputer for correlation. Presently it is not only my job to help in the recording of the data, but I also do the correlation of the data. This involves mounting the drives from the telescopes, finding what we call fringes - which look like a spike in noisy data - and then proceeding to setup the computers to run the correlations. Once the correlations have completed, the output data are saved into FITS format and I pass the data onto someone who will reduce the data further, and acutally make the image. This is the short and sweet version of what I do.

My Hobby

Building a radio telescope doesn't sound all that easy, but in reality it can be pretty simple if you have the right knowledge and some help from a website for Fringe Dwellers.

I've only just started building this, and this page will include a bit of a diary of what I have and how it is going, along with the photos and plots as I make them. Stay tuned...

17-July-2005:
It has started. I have built the insulators, purchased some poles and ropes. Got my hands on some 3.2mm copper stranded wire. The insultators are made from some irrigation pipe (3/4 inch internal - 1 inch external), that has holes drilled in the places where the wire and rope will pass through.
I also setup the first antenna wire, although it didn't actually have the wire on it. I wanted to test that the 2m tall wooden poles I have are tall enough and that the pegs and rope I have to strain it all are strong enough. I'd post a quick pic here, but I don't have the camera at the moment.