Saturday, November 29, 2014

Higginson-Rollins and Rogers 2014 - Development of a Low Cost Spectrometer

I take note of Higginson-Rollins and Rogers 2014 :

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014AAS...22314824H

http://www.haystack.mit.edu/edu/undergrad/srt/pdf%20files/2013_HigginsonRollinsPaper.pdf

Abstract: "Several instruments used for education, outreach and scientific investigations could benefit from a low cost spectrometer. These include the Small Radio Telescope known as the "SRT", a very small radio telescope known as the "VSRT", and an 11 GHz Ozone spectrometer. The SRT is used to observe the Sun and the 21-cm hydrogen line. The SRTs, which until recently were available commercially, are still in operation at many universities and are used for student projects including measuring the Galactic rotation curve of our Galaxy. These instruments, which were initially primarily used to help teach students how to analyze scientific data, are now used for scientific investigations that have resulted in publications in science journals. Recently a low cost USB "dongle" for digital TV has become available. It has been adapted for use as a software defined radio by amateur radio groups. Linux-based software was developed to adapt the device to form a low cost digital spectrometer for the SRT by integrating open source code into the existing C code written for the SRT. Some challenges faced when trying to integrate the USB TV dongle into the SRT system and software will be discussed. To test the effectiveness of the USB TV Dongle based SRT several astronomical observations were made and compared to the older SRT system. These observations show promise for the device replacing older SRT systems at a fraction of the cost and effort and as a possible replacement for the VSRT and Ozone spectrometer."