Big Dish Telescope Highlights

Here are a few highlights of our ongoing effort to convert an old "big dish" home satellite television receiving station into a fully-steerable 3-meter radio telescope system. Over 40 students have been involved in this project to date.

Figure 1: Early work on the project. Left to right: WKU physics students retrieving the 10-foot satellite dish in Summer 2016, a student studying the original mount system in Spring 2017, and a Summer 2017 engineering model of the original mount, which was unable to point at all desired celestial targets and thus required upgrading.

Figure 2: Some WKU student teams who have worked to convert the satellite dish system into a proper radio telescope. Left to right: Engineering azimuth axis design team (with faculty advisors), Fall 2018; Physics motor control and receiver interface teams, Spring 2019; Engineering azimuth axis build team, Summer 2019

Figure 3: Mechanical engineering design work from Spring 2020. Left to right: Full model of redesigned mechanical system (now able to point anywhere in the sky); altitude axis assembly; motor enclosure and counterweights.

Figure 4: A few 2020-2021 activities, left to right: Bench test of drive motor control system; disk-shaped L-band ``patch'' antenna feed, of possible use for detecting hydrogen gas clouds drifting between the stars in our galaxy; patch feed on 6-foot test dish; field survey of very low frequency waves from distant lightning storms.

Figure 5: Some 2021-2022 activities, left to right: Software-defined radio receiver test (using public FM broadcast band); full tabletop test of C-band receiver with battery power (to be used on the radio telescope to detect the Sun, planets, old supernovas, and distant galaxies); field test of full receiver system at WKU's Bell Observatory.

Figure 6: Subsequent receiver work, 2022-2023, left to right: Radio frequency interference check at the WKU Agriculture and Reseach Educaton Center (a.k.a., the ``Ag Farm''), a possible telescope site; experimental ``coffee-can'' feed for L-band reception; modifying the coffee-can feed probe antenna.

Figure 7: Telescope hardware work, 2022-2023, left to right: Schematic diagram for locally-designed circuit board to handle axis angle encoder data to track telescope pointing on sky; axis encoder interface board printed from WKU design; dual-shaft altitude-axis gearbox (blue) to control telescope pointing angle above the horizon, standing next to 3-D printed model (red) made at WKU to ensure design compatibility with other hardware.