FUNcube Dongle as a Radio Telescope

A number of club members have a FUNcube dongle SDR receiver and so I thought that I was draw attention to an interesting post by M0TFO on funcube@yahoogroups.com.



M0TFO draws attention to a Radio Astronomy paper describes the use of the AMSAT-UK FUNcube Dongle Software Defined Radio as part of a Radio Telescope. In the paper Dr David Morgan of the British Astronomical Association Radio Astronomy Group (BAA-RAG) describes how he used the FUNcube Dongle as the heart of a Radio Telescope operating on 1420 MHz.



He concludes that "A newly available SDR component has been shown to be very capable of acting as the heart of a simple and inexpensive three component radio telescope.".



You can download the paper `Experiments with a Software Defined Radio Telescope' by Dr David Morgan at http://www.britastro.org/radio/projects/An_SDR_Radio_Telescope.pdf



Some interesting, but more general radio astronomy projects can be found at http://www.britastro.org/radio/projects/otherproj.html



I have yet to explore the group, but BAA-RAG Yahoo Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/baa-rag/ looks as if it might be worth joining.



Stewart/G3YSX