SCGO Radio Jove System

Welcome to Starlight Cascade Observatory Radio Jove Project !
Near Yarker, Ontario, Canada. (44.22.39 N 76.45.47 W    155M Elevation)
Page Created: 2010 June 29
Page Last Updated: 2022 April 18
SCGO Home * Allsky1 * Allsky2 * RadioJove * SuperSID * Weather

Local Time latest image timestamp: Most recent 30 minute strip chart *

Local Time latest daily image timestamp: Most recent daily strip chart (00:00 to present UT, updated every 30 minutes) Last 30 days * Last 90 days

These are our almost live, most recent Radio SkyPipe data strip charts (updates hourly). The image charts are in UT time.
Current Status (last changed 2017 Nov 08): Dual dipole Antenna Mast height = 15', Phase cable 90 deg south dipole, beam center elevation 49 deg, Jupiter elevation from 45 deg Latitude: 35 degrees. So the beam is still aimed a little high.. 49-35=14 degrees high.
Changing from a 90 deg to a 135 degree phasing cable would lower the beam center from 49 degrees to 42 degrees. TODO built a 135 degree phasing cable length 12.12' and replace 90 degree phasing cable (length=8.08')
In 2023 Jupiter elevation angle will be 45 degrees, so the antenna and Jupiter will be ideally configured.

Radio JOVE students and amateur scientists observe and analyze natural radio emissions of Jupiter, the Sun, and our galaxy. The Radio JOVE project is a hands-on inquiry-based educational project that allows students, teachers and the general public to learn about radio astronomy by building their own radio telescope from an inexpensive kit and/or using remote radio telescopes through the internet. Participants also collaborate with each other through interactions and sharing of data on the network. The Radio JOVE project began in 1998. Since then, more than 1100 teams of students and interested individuals have purchased our non-profit radio telescope kits and are learning radio astronomy by building and operating a radio telescope. This self-supporting program continues to thrive and inspire new groups of students as well as individuals.

2022 March 14 Dear Radio Enthusiast, The Radio JOVE Project is pleased to announce Radio JOVE 2.0, an exciting NASA Partner citizen science project where participants purchase, assemble, and operate a 16-24 MHz radio spectrograph to observe solar, Jupiter, Galactic, and Earth-based radio emissions. Participants have a path to become a citizen scientist capable of contributing scientific-quality data to our data archive. We will continue to support both hardware and software for those participants with RJ1.1 receivers (and calibrators) and we encourage those observers to participate in our citizen science projects. Read the full announcement in our Special Bulletin: https://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/newsletters/ As part of our new direction into citizen science, Radio JOVE has also upgraded our listserv. Register with our Groups.io group (https://groups.io/g/radio-jove) and receive discussions about the Radio JOVE project. This listserv is an invaluable source of information relating to all things Radio JOVE. The old listserv will be turned off by April 15, 2022, so we strongly encourage participants to move to our Groups.io list to continue communicating with us and receiving RJ information. Visit our Getting Started webpage for more about how to participate in Radio JOVE. We are excited to start this new science adventure with you. Best regards, The Radio JOVE Team

https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/swx-overview-small.gif"

Data Archives

Special Events:

X1.1 NON event 13:25 UTC 2022 May 03 This is the SuperSID data from the X1.1 class solar flare that occurred on Tuesday, peaking at 13:25 UTC (-4=09:25 EDT). This is not too surprising as this SuperSID station monitors the ionosphere between southeastern Ontario and the coast of Maine, USA, to our east. The Sun was also away over to the east when this happened. This is the new, still testing, graph produced with NOAA event annotations. So it is *not* surprising that the RadioJOVE system did not capture the event, being outside of its detection area.

X1.1 flare at 13:47 UTC 2022 April 30 You know its a good one when it goes offscale! 🙂 Sun azimuth 107, or 83 deg off due south /15= or about 5.5 hours from solar noon. as an added bonus, there is a 1:46 minute audio recording starting at 13:42:55 UTC running to 13:44:42 UTC, still below the maximum event time. located here: https://starlightcascade.ca/blog/2022/04/x-1-solar-flare-at-1347-utc-2022april30/ *warning* loud!

X1. solarflare 15:35 UTC 2021 October 28 Region 2887 Start Time UT 15:17; Max 15:35; End 15:48

X 1.6 solar flare 2014 Sept 10 Max 17:48 UT

X 1.1 solar flare 2012 March 05 Region 1429

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Other resources

Where is Jupiter now? from http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/astro/Planets/planetchart.html
Russian XRay Emissions near realtime
US National Weather Service Space Weather Prediction Center realtime data

RadioJove System Log

20100725 - assembled north dipole mast and antenna. We did not have enough PVC pipe to complete the 2nd dipole mast but did complete the southern dipole antenna.

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The dual dipole antennas set to 15' above ground aligned to geographic east/west.

Our Antenna Setup

All of the setup was derived from the instruction manuals. These three images/figures show the critical information needed: Our calculations (2010 July) led us to assemble the mast at a 15' level for the dipoles. The dipoles are aligned to true east-west (not magnetic).

We plan to build the receiver assembly in the next week, find some RG6 coax to run from the combiner to the receiver and then finding some spare computer to take the audio output from the receiver and run it through a data recorder such as skypipe.

We need approx 70' of coax to run from the antenna to the observatory building where the computer will be. Using RG6 coax (we could not find any RG59) we determined that the nearest 0.5 wavelength that is at least that long is 2.5 wavelengths of 38.18' (11.64m) or 95.45' (29.1m) in total. Luckily our local Rona hardware store sells a 30m roll of RG6 for only $40 or so.

Jupiters declination in mid 2010 is approx 0 degrees and is increasing. It's elevation based on our latitude of approx 45 degrees will be approx 45 degrees and increasing.

The antenna height above ground for 40-55 degrees is 15', so we assembled the mast for that height.

JEA=JupiterElevationAngle; AH=AntennaHeight
2010 Jul1 JEA=45deg AH=15'
manuals/2011 Jan1 JEA=43deg AH=15'
2011 Jul1 JEA=56deg AH=10'
2012 Jan1 JEA=55deg AH=15'
2012 Jul1 JEA=65deg AH=10'
2013 Jan1 JEA=65deg AH=10'

Our receiver

We assembled and tested the 20.1 MHz receiver over 6 hours on a rainy Saturday afternoon. There were over 100 components to solder in and now I can see why the price tag for an assembled receiver is so much more than the kit! Some of the harder parts of assembly were the identification of some of the smaller parts, with very tiny markings on them, like the picofarad capacitors, the inductors and some of the germanium diodes.

Links

#runs hourly at 1 minute after the hour
1 * * * * /radiojove/moveimages
#runs hourly at 2 minutes after the hour
2 * * * * /radiojove/process
#runs once daily at 23:59 UT *needs to change when we move from EDT to EST
59 19 * * * /radiojove/archivedailyut

#!/bin/bash
echo moving any images from radiojove to radiojove/archive/2011daily and 2011hourly
cd /radiojove/
for i in   *skypipepicFV.jpg
do
  mv $i archive/2011daily/$i
done
for i in   *skypipepic.jpg
do
  mv $i archive/2011hourly/$i
done

#!/bin/bash
cd /radiojove/
LS=/bin/ls
echo at 23:59 UT copy last24 and rename to date and copy to archive
  datetimestamp=`$LS last24.htm -lgo --time-style=+%Y%m%d_%H%M_%S | cut -c 19-34`
  cp last24.htm "archive/scorj-$datetimestamp.htm"