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 Previous: California ARES Group Responds for Back-to-Back Blazes |  Next: The Great Circus Train 2001 |
The original, steerable Jansky "Bruce Array" at Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. |
Karl Jansky at the "helm" of the Bruce Array, in a photo taken around 1933. |
SOCORRO, NM, Sep 6, 2001--The National Radio Astronomy Observatory Amateur Radio Club will make use of a historical antenna replica and call sign for a special event the weekend of September 15-16 from Green Bank, West Virginia. The NRAO club will use a full-size replica of the antenna that Karl Jansky used in 1932 to detect radio emissions from beyond Earth for the first time. And it will use W9GFZ, the call sign once held by Grote Reber, who built the first radio astronomy antenna.
The Jansky replica antenna is on display at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, where the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope--the world's largest fully steerable antenna--is being commissioned. W9GFZ, now held by the NRAO club in Socorro, will take to the air September 15 and 16 on 21.320 MHz (SSB), plus or minus QRM.
The Jansky array did not start out to be a radio telescope antenna. In 1928, Karl Jansky was hired by Bell Telephone Laboratories and given the task of locating sources of interference to shortwave radio links carrying transatlantic telephone conversations. He built a highly directional, rotatable antenna--called a Bruce array--and began analyzing noise sources at 20.5 MHz. He identified shortwave noise coming from both nearby and distant thunderstorms, as well as a faint, steady hiss. By 1932, he identified this faint hiss as coming from the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.
When the news went public, Jansky's discovery of radio emission from
the cosmos not only made page one news in The New York Times of May 5, 1933, it
excited Reber--then a radio engineer in Wheaton, Illinois. In 1937, Reber--who
will turn 90 this December 22--built the first dedicated radio-astronomy antenna--a
31.4-foot-diameter parabolic dish--in his back yard.
Grote Reber in the 1930s, at the controls of his homemade radio telescope. In 1938, Reber's third receiver, listening at 160 MHz, was successful in detecting radio emission from the Milky Way, confirming Jansky's earlier discovery. |
A recent photo of Grote Reber, formerly W9GFZ, who will turn 90 on December 22. Reber now lives in Tasmania. He is no longer licensed. |
In the 1960s, the NRAO dedicated a full-scale replica of Jansky's antenna built by the same carpenter who had worked on the Bell Labs' original, which had vanished sometime during the 1950s. The site of Jansky's antenna in Holmdel, New Jersey was rediscovered a few years ago. In 1998, Bell Labs dedicated a monument at the location to Jansky, who died in 1950 at the age of 44.
The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope--the world's largest fully steerable antenna. [NRAO Photo] |
The NRAO replica of Jansky's antenna is a working Bruce array that can be operated efficiently on the amateur 15-meter band. NRAO hams have used it several times in the past, but it has not been put on the air in a number of years.
The special event station will operate starting on September 15 at approximately 1300 UTC for as long as propagation lasts. Operation will resume at the same time the next day and continue until approximately 1600 UTC.
A QSL card is available. To obtain one, send your QSL and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to W9GFZ, NRAO Amateur Radio Club, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, PO Box O, Socorro, NM 87801.--Dave Finley, N1IRZ
| Previous: California ARES Group Responds for Back-to-Back Blazes | Next: The Great Circus Train 2001 |
