History of Radio Astronomy at WKU


WKU Radio Observatory, Bell Farm, 1977

Western Kentucky University has a long history of radio astronomy activity, with particular focus on the planet Jupiter in the early days, including some of the first very long baseline interferometry ever attempted. This tradition was recently revived on a more modest scale as part of NASA's Radio Jove project to foster education and public outreach in radio astronomy.

The WKU radio astronomy program was initiated by Physics & Astronomy Department Head Frank Six in 1967, the year after he was hired into the position. Six obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Florida in 1963 on bursts of low-frequency radiation from Jupiter and wished to extend this work with WKU student involvement. Six's former thesis advisor, Alex Smith, and others at UF, including student (and later faculty member) Thomas Carr, began studying Jupiter radio emissions immediately following their discovery by Bernard Burke and Kenneth Franklin at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1955 -- just two decades after Karl Jansky first detected radio waves from outside the Earth's atmosphere. (Several graduates of the UF program became founders of the Radio Jove project in 1998.)


Stations (Smith 1969)
Frank Six established the WKU Radio Observatory to make high-speed recordings of 18 MHz Jupiter emissions in coordination with parallel observations run by UF in Florida and Chile, with the intention of comparing the signal arrival times in the three locations in order to pinpoint the precise origins of the emissions within Jupiter's magnetosphere (an early application of VLBI, which was first demonstrated coherently by Canadian astronomers in 1967). UF engineers Dick Flagg and Max Robinson assisted with the initial WKU setup. Robinson provided long-term support after being hired in 1968 as a WKU faculty member in physics and engineering, with additional assistance from WKU Ogden College Machine Shop technician Alonzo Alexander. Once the WKU station was operational, Flagg helped build the Chile receiving station, shortly after the commissioning of large optical observatories nearby at Cerro Tololo and La Silla. Although the Chile receiving station was subject to technical challenges and political uncertainties, valuable data were obtained and published (see references).

Other hires of UF alumni as WKU faculty included Richard Hackney in 1972, Karen Hackney in 1973, and Roger Scott in 1991. Scott was actually a WKU student first -- one of several who went through Six's radio astronomy program, obtaining his M.S. at WKU in 1970 before pursing his Ph.D. at UF. Other students in the WKU program included Jesse Burd, Bill Allen, Bruce Allen, Ed Harris, Jim Sky, and Sam Collins. (Although only briefly at WKU, Sky later became a key member of the Radio Jove project.) If you know of other people who should be listed here, please contact Steven Gibson. Thanks!


1st Observatory Exterior
1st Observatory Interior
Frank Six

The first WKU radio observatory was on farm land owned by Rogers Lawson near the community of Alvaton, 10 miles south-southeast of Bowling Green. Unfortunately, this site was in the flood plain of Drake's Creek, and a heavy rain storm in June 1969 ruined the building and equipment it housed, including a Collins receiver, Texas Instruments paper chart recorder, and Magnavox magnetic tape recorder; the large polar-mounted Yagi antenna survived.


Flood on Highway 231, 1969 Jun 23
Flood at Observatory, 1969 Jun 24
Flood Damage, 1969 Jun 27

Building Interior, 1969 Jun 27
Max Robinson, 1969 Jun 27
Roger Scott, 1969 Jun 27

This posed a significant setback for Roger Scott's M.S. thesis project, but the station was rebuilt in a different location the following year, and the thesis work was completed.


Scott + Robinson, 2nd Observatory, 1970
Antenna on Truck at WKU, 1970
Roger Scott with Yagi antenna, 1970
Yagi installation, 1970

The new facility was placed on a farm belonging to Warren County Judge Executive Charles Bell. This was 10 miles west-southwest of Bowling Green, at the foot of the hill where WKU's optical observatory would later be built on land Bell donated in 1976, although construction was not completed until 1987. The radio observatory was maintained at Bell Farm for over a decade.


2nd Observatory, 1977 + 600 dpi
2nd Observatory, 1977 + 600 dpi
2nd Observatory, 1977 + 600 dpi

Following Frank Six's departure from WKU in 1983, local radio astronomy activity waned. The radio observatory was shut down, and equipment on loan from UF was returned. WKU astronomy research focused on use of the 24-inch (0.6-m) Bell optical telescope, particularly for monitoring quasars and other variable sources. Sandra Clemens, another UF graduate who was a visiting professor at WKU in the 1990s, experimented with receiving Galactic radio emissions using dipole antennas at Bell for student education, in a forerunner of more recent Radio Jove experiments. For the most part however, the WKU astronomy program was "radio quiet" during this time.

Radio astronomer Steven Gibson joined the WKU faculty in 2008 and began new Radio Jove observations to augment the Honors General Astronomy (ASTR 214) course when he started teaching it in 2011. This educational program has since been broadened to include other types of radio observations.

References

Popular Articles and Related Sources

Scientific Articles

Steven Gibson | Radio Projects