The rtl_power program allows you to use the RTL-SDR to perform a power scan over an arbitrarily large portion of the frequency spectrum (within the RTL-SDR’s supported frequency range) by hopping over ~2 MHz swaths of bandwidth. The updated rtl_power_fftw software was originally written by Klemen Blokar and Andrej Lajovic and is an update over the regular rtl_power program. It uses a faster FFT processing algorithm and has several other enhancements that make it more useful for radio astronomy purposes.

Recently Mario Cannistrà has released a new version of rtl_power_fftw which has several additional improvements applied. He intends to use it in his RTL-SDR based radio astronomy IoT project which is presented on his Hackster.io blog. He writes:

I added the following command line parameters:

• -e param for session duration
  this allows to specify the recording duration in sec, mins… etc just like it was possible with rtl-power
• -q flag to limit verbosity
  this will allow the various printouts to happen only the first time and not on every scan
• -m param to produce binary matrix output and separate metadata file
  this will get a file name (no extension) and use it to store the power values in binary format within a .bin file + a metadata text file with .met extension

Summary of my requirements:

• I wanted to leverage the ability of rtl-power-fftw to specify N average values to integrate for less than 1 second when needed. Plus running multi-MHz scans and storing for several minutes.
• I wanted to use a binary format instead of the .csv one in order to obtain the smallest possible size since I’m logging all the night long (CSV’s blank delimiters and decimal dots were wasting my precious microSD space)
• keep high the precision on decimal digits saving float values (could be important for other usages)
• obtain a complete stream of binary values representing all the bins for each scan, one scan after the other, in a matrix like organization
• …that would allow me to plot the waterfall extremely fast with gnuplot
• …and then add specific annotations and file properties/metadata in a more convenient way using python

The post Radio Astronomy Tool rtl_power_fftw Updated appeared first on rtl-sdr.com.

Back in September 2015 we posted about how radio astronomers Peter W East and GM Gancio were able to use an RTL-SDR dongle for the radio astronomy task of detecting pulsars. A pulsar is a rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. If this beam points towards the earth, it can then be observed with a large dish antenna and a radio, like the RTL-SDR. 

More recently they published a new paper titled “Software De-Dispersion of RTL-SDR Pulsar Data” (pdf).  De-dispersion is a technique that allows very weak signals to be extracted from the background noise. The introduction to the paper reads:

Data files produced by RTL SDR dongles can be folded directly for pulsar detection using software such as rapulsar.exe. Using simple I/Q vector averaging software, the data can be down-sampled by factors of more than 100 prior to folding and/or period search processing to speed up useful data extraction. Ideally, wide band RF data should be de-dispersed to optimise later search and folding processing. De-dispersion is normally carried out by time adjusting data sampled from RF filter banks before combination. This note describes how data already digitised from the RTL SDR can be spectrum analysed or filtered using the FFT algorithm. Two methods are discussed, one summing power with some down-sampling; the second, a ‘coherent’ method that de-disperses the rtlsdr.exe .bin data file and outputs a .bin-compatible file. Both accurately de-disperses the data offering an improved folded data SNR.

More information about radio astronomy with the RTL-SDR, pulsars and the associated software links can be found at Peter W East’s webpage http://y1pwe.co.uk/RAProgs/index.html.

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The RTL-SDR can be used for many interesting radio astronomy applications such as observing the Hydrogen line. Hydrogen atoms randomly emit photons at a wavelength of 21cm (1420.4058 MHz). Normally a single hydrogen atom will rarely emit a photon, but since space and the galaxy is filled with many hydrogen atoms the average effect is an observable RF power spike at 1420.4058 MHz. By pointing a radio telescope at the night sky and integrating the RF power over time, a power spike indicating the hydrogen line can be observed in a frequency spectrum plot.

On his website Steve Olney has been writing about his experiments and results with using an RTL-SDR to observe the hydrogen line. On his website he writes that he uses a 3M dish, with an LNA at the antenna to reduce the system NF, a hydrogen line tuned bandpass filter to remove out of band noise, 2 line amps to overcome coax loss, and finally a second LNA just before the RTL-SDR dongle to optimize the signal strength for the ADC. The dongle he uses has been modified to use a TCXO, and is aircooled via a PC fan. He also uses a modified version of the rtlsdr.exe IQ file recorder and his own custom GUI for controlling the RTL-SDR and antenna tracking mechanism.

His results show that he was able to detect the Hydrogen in the Large and Small Magellanic clouds. He also shows a method for converting the 8-bit IQ data down to 1-bit to save disk space, and shows that while some noise is added, the overall result is preserved.

See the related posts for other hydrogen line experiments with the RTL-SDR.

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Amateur radio astronomer Peter W East has recently uploaded a new document to his website. The document details how he built a quad RTL-SDR based receiver for his radio astronomy experiments in interferometry and wide-band pulsar detection (pdf – NOTE: Link Removed. Please see his website for a direct link to the pdf “Quad RTL Receiver for Pulsar Detection”. High traffic from this post and elsewhere has made the document go offline several times). Interferometry is a technique which uses multiple smaller radio dishes spaced some distance apart to essentially get the same resolution a much larger dish. Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars which emit radio waves, and the strongest ones can be observed by amateur radio telescopes and a receiver like the RTL-SDR.

The Quad receiver has four RTL-SDR’s all driven by a single TCXO, mounted inside an aluminum case with fans for air cooling. He also uses a 74HC04 hex inverter to act as a buffer for the 0.5 PPM TCXO that he uses. This ensures that the TCXO signal is strong enough to drive all four RTL-SDRs.

Whilst all the clocks are all synced to a single master clock, synchronisation between the RTL-SDR’s is still difficult to achieve because of jitter introduced by the operating system. To solve this he introduces a noise source and a switch. By switching the noise source on and off, correlation of the signal data can be achieved in post processing.

In the document Peter shows in detail how the system is constructed, and how it all works, as well as showing some interferometry results. The system uses custom software that he developed and this is all explained in the document as well.

The post Building a Quad RTL-SDR Receiver for Radio Astronomy appeared first on rtl-sdr.com.

Radio-Sky Spectrograph is a radio astronomy software program that integrates data over long periods of time and displays it as a waterfall. It is described by the author:

Radio-Sky Spectrograph displays a waterfall spectrum. It is not so different from other programs that produce these displays except that it saves the spectra at a manageable data rate and provides channel widths that are consistent with many natural radio signal bandwidths. For terrestrial , solar flare, Jupiter decametric, or emission/absorption observations you might want to use RSS.

Radio Sky Spectograph is compatible with the RTL-SDR via an intermediary program called RTL Bridge, and now it is also compatible with the SDRplay via another intermediary program written by Nathan Towne called SDRplay2RSS. 

In previous posts we showed how some amateur radio astronomers were able to capture noise bursts from the sun and from Jupiter with an RTL-SDR. In the SDRplay software release post and documentation that comes with the software Nathan shows how he was able to capture solar emissions and Jupiter bursts with the SDRplay.

The post Radio-Sky Spectrograph now supports the SDRPlay appeared first on rtl-sdr.com.

Radio-Sky Spectrograph is a radio astronomy software program which is often used together with the RTL-SDR or other similar SDRs. It is best explained by the author:

Radio-Sky Spectrograph displays a waterfall spectrum. It is not so different from other programs that produce these displays except that it saves the spectra at a manageable data rate and provides channel widths that are consistent with many natural radio signal bandwidths. For terrestrial , solar flare, Jupiter decametric, or emission/absorption observations you might want to use RSS.

Usually to interface an RTL-SDR with Radio-Sky Specrtograph a program called RTL-Bridge is used. However, now SDR# plugin programmer Alan Duffy has created a new plugin that allows SDR# to interface with Radio-Sky Spectrograph via a network stream. This allows it to work with any SDR that is supported by SDR# plugins. Alan Duffy writes:

I wrote the plugin after becoming interested in amateur radio astronomy. The plugin allows you to use any of the software defined radios supported by SDR# to feed the Radio-Sky Spectrograph program with wide-band data. The plugin shows the frequency, bandwidth, and FFT resolution and has a user selected “Number of Channels” that are sent to the spectrograph program with an allowable range of 100 to 500. This number can only be edited when the data stream is not enabled. Also if certain key parameters change, such as the frequency or decimation, the network stream will stop as the spectrograph would no longer be capturing the same data. If this happens, simply click the start button on client side software (i.e. Radio-Sky Spectrograph). As long as the Enable box is checked on the server side, the plugin will listen for a connection and start transmitting data after RSS makes a new request for data.

We note that the software might also be useful for simply capturing a long term waterfall for finding active frequencies or looking for meteor scatter or aircraft scatter echoes. 

The post New SDR# Plugin: Radio-Sky Spectrograph Data Stream appeared first on rtl-sdr.com.

Patchvonbraun (aka Marcus Leech) is one of the pioneers in using low cost SDR dongles for amateur radio astronomy experiments. In the past he’s shown us how to receive things like the hydrogen line,  detect meteors and observe solar transits using an RTL-SDR. He’s also given a good overview and introduction to amateur radio astronomy in this slide show.

Now Marcus and others are starting up a new project called the “Canadian Centre for Experimental Radio Astronomy (CCERA)”. They write that this will be an amateur radio astronomy research facility that will produce open source software and hardware designs for small scale amateur radio astronomers. Currently they also already have a hydrogen line telescope set up, which is producing live graphs and data. From their recent posts it also looks like they’re working on building antennas for pulsar detection. They also have a GitHub available for any software they produce at https://github.com/ccera-astro.

Currently CCERA is looking for donations over at gofundme, and they are hoping to eventually raise $25k. They write:

About CCERA:

Radio astronomy is one of the most important ways to observe the cosmos. It is how we learned about the existence of the afterglow of the big bang (the cosmic microwave background), it is how we observe huge swaths of the universe that are otherwise obscured by dust. Most of what’s going on out there can’t be seen with visible light.

Astronomy has traditionally been one of the areas in science where dedicated non-professionals have continued to make an enormous contribution to the field. Optical astronomy requires little more than a telescope and knowledge.

Radio astronomy has, up until recently, required a lot more skill and resources. However, technology has advanced enough that small groups could be making serious contributions to radio astronomy. With the right sorts of software and information, many dedicated non-professionals could be doing good work in the area, and CCERA intends to help make that a reality.

CCERA will be producing open source software and hardware designs to help non-professional and professional radio astronomers alike, documenting them, and helping people get up to speed so that they can use these powerful tools themselves. Our GitHub repository is: https://github.com/ccera-astro

CCERA will also be operating its own radio astronomy facilities, initially in Ontario, Canada. These will serve as a test-bed for our own designs, as a place for us to train interested people in the operation of low cost radio astronomy equipment, and will also be used for real radio astronomy work. All our data will be publically-available.

About us:

Roughly 10 years ago, I and a number of others started a project to restore a large, historic, satellite earth station antenna at Shirleys Bay in Ottawa. Our goal was to bring the dish back on-line for use in amateur radio astronomy, research, and importantly, educational outreach about science, and radio astronomy.

The project came to a sudden end back in 2013/14 when the owner of the dish (The Canadian Space Agency) needed to dismantle it to make way for other occupants of the site.

However, during that period, we became fascinated with the possibilities that opening up radio astronomy to skilled non-professionals could bring.

Since then, our group has been working on another far lower cost project to build our own a specialized radio telescope somewhere in the Rideau Valley area. Many of our group live in the area, and Marcus lives in Smiths Falls. With good attention to the usability of our designs and open publication of our tools under appropriate open source licenses, our work should be replicable by others. We thus hope to kick off a new era in non-professional radio astronomy.

What we need the money for:

We’ve secured a small office in the Gallipeau Center outside of Smiths Falls, and will be able to erect our specialized antenna arrays over the coming year.

While we have a lot of the equipment we’ll need, we’ll have more equipment to buy, and on-going expenses to cover, including rent, insurance, miscellaneous mechanical construction materials (lumber, metal, etc). We also need to cover expenses relating to incorporation as a not-for-profit.

Our goal is to provide a test facility for small-scale radio astronomy research, and to develop techniques that allow small organizations and educational institutions to run their own small-scale radio astronomy observing programs.

If we are successful, in addition to making our designs and software available under open source licenses, we’ll be holding regular public lectures, host training seminars, host school groups, etc. We will also produce videos of our work for those who cannot visit us directly in Ottawa. We want to make some of the techniques of “big science” accessible and understandable.

We can’t do it without the help of the public, who, we hope, will become our students, collaborators, and ongoing supporters.

We will also make all of our data available to the public without fee or restrictions. We believe in openness in scientific endeavours, even small ones such as ours.

Marcus Leech
(tentative) Director
Canadian Centre for Experimental Radio Astronomy
www.ccera.ca

If you have even a passing interest in radio astronomy please consider donating, as CCERA’s work may open up exciting new possibilities for amateur radio astronomers with low cost SDR dongles.

The post Helping to Raise Funds for the Canadian Centre for Experimental Radio Astronomy (CCERA) appeared first on rtl-sdr.com.

A few days ago a University research paper titled “Searching for giga-Jansky fast radio bursts from the Milky Way with a global array of low-cost radio receivers” was uploaded to the Cornell University Library. In this paper authors Dan Maoz of Tel-Aviv University and Abraham Loeb of Harvard suggest that citizen science enabled mobile phones and RTL-SDR dongles placed around the world could be used to detect fast radio bursts (FRBs) originating from within our own galaxy. The abstract reads:

If fast radio bursts (FRBs) originate from galaxies at cosmological distances, then their all-sky rate implies that the Milky Way may host an FRB on average once every 30-1500 years. If FRBs repeat for decades or centuies, a local FRB could be active now. A typical Galactic FRB would produce a millisecond radio pulse with ~1 GHz flux density of ~3E10 Jy, comparable to the radio flux levels and frequencies of cellular communication devices (cell phones, Wi-Fi, GPS). We propose to search for Galactic FRBs using a global array of low-cost radio receivers. One possibility is to use the ~1GHz communication channel in cellular phones through a Citizens-Science downloadable application. Participating phones would continuously listen for and record candidate FRBs and would periodically upload information to a central data processing website, which correlates the incoming data from all participants, to identify the signature of a real, globe-encompassing, FRB from an astronomical distance. Triangulation of the GPS-based pulse arrival times reported from different locations will provide the FRB sky position, potentially to arc-second accuracy. Pulse arrival times from phones operating at diverse frequencies, or from an on-device de-dispersion search, will yield the dispersion measure (DM) which will indicate the FRB source distance within the Galaxy. A variant of this approach would be to use the built-in ~100 MHz FM-radio receivers present in cell phones for an FRB search at lower frequencies. Alternatively, numerous “software-defined radio” (SDR) devices, costing ~$10 US each, could be plugged into USB ports of personal computers around the world (particularly in radio quiet regions) to establish the global network of receivers.

‘Fast radio bursts’ or FRBs are very brief pulses of extremely strong radio waves which have the transmit power of 500 million suns, though by the time they reach the earth they can only be picked up by radio telescopes. Radio astronomers have so far been mystified by the cause of these FRBs, and research has been hampered by the fact that the source of FRBs is notoriously difficult to pinpoint because they are unpredictable, and their energy appears to originate from all over the sky and not from a single point. Many scientists think that most FRBs must originate from outside of our galaxy, and in 2016 one was finally pinpointed as coming from a dwarf galaxy 2.5 billion light years away from earth. But the authors of the paper speculate from the rate of how often FRBs are seen, that our Milky Way galaxy could host its own local FRB event once every 30 – 1500 years.

If an FRB occurs within our own galaxy then they speculate that the received power could be strong enough to be detected by consumer level mobile phones or RTL-SDR radios, meaning that no large radio telescope dish is required for detection. By continuously monitoring for FRBs on mobile phones and/or RTL-SDRs spread around the world, a local FRB source could one day be pinpointed thanks to the high resolving power of multiple detectors spread apart.

The post Searching for giga-Jansky fast radio bursts from the Milky Way with a global array of low-cost radio receivers (RTL-SDRs) appeared first on rtl-sdr.com.

Over on the Thought Emporium YouTube channel the team have uploaded two videos that may be of interest to radio hobbyists. The first video shows a nice overview about receiving NOAA weather satellite images. They explain everything from scratch for complete novice, so the videos are great for almost anyone to watch and learn about radio and SDR concepts. The blurb of the first video reads:

Over the past 2 months, me and my friend Artem have been building antennas to receive signals from weather satellites as they pass overhead. This video chronicles our progress through this project and goes through some of the science involved in working with radio and receiving transmissions. We explore how dipoles work and how to build them, and how we built our final double cross antenna. We used an SDR (software defined radio) called a HackRF to do the work of interpreting the received signals and then decoded them with some special software. We pulled images from 4 satellites: NOAA 15, 18 and 19 as well as METEOR M2. The satellites broadcast immediately as they take the images and no images are stored, so we’re likely the only ones on earth with these images.

The second video is about building a radio telescope. Like the NOAA video, they explain all concepts in a simple and easy to understand way, so that anyone even without any radio knowledge can understand what the project is about. In the video they also show how they use a 3D printer to create a tracking mount which can point a satellite dish. They then use the dish to create a satellite heat map. The blurb reads:

Over the last 2 months me and my friend Artem (you met him in the last video) built our first radio telescope. It was built mostly out of off the shelf components, like a satellite dish and Ku band LNB, as well as some parts we 3d printed. When all was said and done we had a system that could not only take images of the sky in radio frequencies (in this case 10-12ghz), but could also be used to track satellites. With it, we were able to see the ring of satellites in geosynchronous orbit, over 35,000km away, This is only the first of what I suspect will be many more telescopes like this. Next time we’ll be building ones that are far larger and can see things like the hydrogen lines so we can image the milky way.

The post YouTube Videos: NOAA Satellite Tutorial and Building a Radio Telescope appeared first on rtl-sdr.com.

Back in September 2015 we made a posted that discussed how some amateur radio astronomers have been using RTL-SDR’s for detecting pulsars. A pulsar is a rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. If this beam points towards the earth, it can then be observed with a large dish antenna and a radio, like the RTL-SDR.

In their work they showed how they were able to detect and measure the rotational period of the Vela pulsar, one of the strongest and easiest to receive pulsars. They also noted how using several RTL-SDR dongles could reduce the required satellite dish size.

Recently we came across Hannes Fasching (OE5JFL)’s work where he shows that he has detected 15 pulsars so far using RTL-SDR dongles. His detection system specs include:

Antenna: 7.3m homemade offset dish, OE5JFL tracking system
Feeds: 70cm (424 MHz) dual-dipole with solid reflector, 23cm (1294 MHz) RA3AQ horn
Preamplifiers: 23cm cavity MGF4919, 70cm 2SK571 (30 years old!)
Line Amplifier: PGA103+
Interdigital filter: designed with VK3UM software, 70cm 4-pole, 23cm 3-pole
Receiver: RTL-SDR (error <1ppm), 2 MHz bandwidth
Software: IW5BHY, Presto, Tempo, Murmur

Furthermore, from looking at the Neutron Star Group website, it seems that the majority of amateur radio astronomers interested in pulsar detection are currently using RTL-SDR dongles as the receiver. Some of them have access to very large 25m dishes, but some like IW5BHY, IK5VLS and I0NAA use smaller 2.5m – 5m dishes which can fit into a backyard.

If you are interested in getting into amateur pulsar detection, check out the Neutron Star Group website as they have several resources available for learning.

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Earlier in April we posted about Hannes Fasching (OE5JFL)’s work in detecting pulsars with an RTL-SDR. Thanks to Steve Olney (VK2XV), administrator of the Neutron Star Group for pointing out that there are actually several amateur radio astronomers who are using RTL-SDR dongles for pulsar detection. 

A pulsar is a rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. If this beam points towards the earth, it can then be observed with a large dish antenna and a radio, like the RTL-SDR. Pulsars create weakly detectable noise bursts across a wide frequency range. They create these noise bursts at precise intervals (milliseconds to seconds depending on the pulsar), so they can be detected from within the natural noise by performing some mathematical analysis on the data. Typically a few hours of data needs to be received to be able to analyze it, with more time needed for smaller dishes.

One problem is that pulsar signals can suffer from ‘dispersion’ due to many light years of travel through the interstellar medium. This simply means that higher frequencies of the noise burst tend to arrive before the lower frequencies. Mathematical de-dispersion techniques can be used to eliminate this problem enabling one to take advantage of wideband receivers like the RTL-SDR and other SDRs. The more bandwidth collected and de-dispersed, the smaller the dish required for detection.

Over on the Neutron Star Group several amateur pulsar detection projects are listed, and entries denoted with the “^” symbol make use of the RTL-SDR. Below we show a brief overview of those projects:

Andrea Dell’Immagine (IW5BHY) – Based in Italy Andrea often uses a 3D corner reflector antenna which is equivalent to a 2.5 meter diameter dish to observe pulsars in the 70cm band (~420 MHz). The antenna is in a fixed position so he can only detect pulsars that drift into the beam width of the antenna. With this antenna, a 0.3dB NF LNA, an RTL-SDR and de-dispersion techniques he’s been able to detect the Pulsar B0329+54 which is 2,643 light years away with an integration time of about 3 hours.

Andrea has also used a 4M dish to detect Pulsar B0329+54 also at 70cm with an RTL-SDR. With the larger dish he’s able to detect it within about 40 minutes of integration time.

Hannes Fasching (OE5JFL) – Based in Austria Hannes has a 7.3M dish that he uses for pulsar detection with his RTL-SDR. With this large dish he’s been able to receive 22 pulsars at both 70cm (424 MHz), and 23cm (1294 MHz) frequencies. With such a large dish, detecting a strong pulsar like B0329+54 only needs less than a minute of integration time.

Mario Natali (I0NAA) – Based in Italy Mario uses a 5M dish to observer pulsars at both 409 MHz and 1297 MHz. Combined with a low noise figure LNA and his RTL-SDR he’s been able to receive the B0329+54 pulsar with an integration time of about 2 – 2.5 hours.

Michiel Klaassen – From the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory in the Netherlands Michiel has used their large 25M dish and an RTL-SDR to detect B0329+54 at 419 MHz.

Peter East & Guillermo Gancio – Peter and Guillermo have used the large 30M dish at El Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía (IAR) in Argentina and an RTL-SDR to detect the Vela pulsar (B0833-45) at 1420 MHz.

In terms of hardware required, from the above projects we see that you’ll need an RTL-SDR dongle (other more costly SDR’s could also be used), a dish as large as you can get (along with some sort of dish pointing system), a low noise figure amplifier (0.5dB or less is desired) to be placed right by the dish, a few line amps if the cable run is long and perhaps a filter if you are seeing interference from terrestrial signals.

An overview of software for detecting pulsars with the RTL-SDR can be found over on the Neutron Star Groups software page. Essentially what you need is an analysis program which can work on the raw IQ data that is collected by the RTL-SDR and dish antenna. This software ‘folds’ the data, looking for the regular noise bursts from the pulsars. The output is data that can be used to create a graph indicating the spin period of the pulsar, and thus confirming the detection.

Over on our forums Andy (M0CYP) has posted about his new meteor scatter detection program which works with HDSDR and any supported SDR like an RTL-SDR. It works in an interesting way, as instead of analyzing sound files for blips of meteor scatter activity it analyzes screenshots of the HDSDR waterfall. The software automatically grabs the screenshots and determines if a signal is present on any given frequency. You can set a preconfigured detection frequency for a far away transmitter, and if the waterfall shows a reflection it will record that as a meteor.

Meteor scatter works by receiving a distant but powerful transmitter via reflections off the trails of ionized air that meteors leave behind when they enter the atmosphere. Normally the transmitter would be too far away to receive, but if its able to bounce off the ionized trail in the sky it can reach far over the horizon to your receiver. Typically powerful broadcast FM radio stations, analog TV, and radar signals at around 140 MHz are used. Some amateur radio enthusiasts also use this phenomena as a long range VHF communications tool with their own transmitted signals. See the website www.livemeteors.com for a livestream of a permanently set up RTL-SDR meteor detector (although that site does not use Andy’s software).

Andy writes that his meteor scatter detection software is still in beta so there might be some bugs. You can write feedback on the forum post, in the comments here, or contact Andy directly via the link on his website.

Over on his blog Dave Venne has been documenting his attempts at using National Weather Service (NWS) broadcasts for forward scatter meteor detection with an RTL-SDR. Forward scatter meteor detection is a passive method for detecting meteors as they enter the atmosphere. When a meteor enters the atmosphere it leaves behind a trail of highly RF reflective ionized air. This ionized air can reflect far away signals from strong transmitters directly into your receiving antenna, thus detecting a meteor.

Typically signals from analog TV and broadcast FM stations are preferred as they are near the optimal frequency for reflection of the ionized trails. However, Dave lives in an area where the broadcast FM spectrum is completely saturated with signals, leaving no empty frequencies to detect meteors. Instead Dave decided to try and use NWS signals at 160 MHz. In the USA there are seven frequencies for NWS and they are physically spaced out so that normally only one transmitter can be heard. Thus tuning to a far away station should produce nothing but static unless a meteor is reflecting its signal. Dave however does note that the 160 MHz frequency is less than optimal for detection and you can expect about 14 dB less reflected signal from meteors.

So far Dave has been able to detect several ‘blips’ with his cross-dipole antenna, RTL-SDR and SDR#. He also uses the Chronolapse freeware software to perform timelapse screenshots of the SDR# waterfall, so that the waterfall can be reviewed later. Unfortunately, most of the blips appear to have been aircraft as they seem to coincide with local air activity, and exhibit a Doppler shift characteristic that is typical of aircraft. He notes that the idea may still work for others who do not live near an airport.

We note that if you are interested in detecting aircraft via passive forward scatter and their Doppler patterns, then this previous post on just that may interest you.

Adam 9A4QV is the manufacturer of the LNA4ALL, a high quality low noise amplifier popular with RTL-SDR users. He also sells filters, one of which is useful for hydrogen line detection. Recently he’s uploaded a tutorial document showing how to use 2x LNA4ALL, with a filter and RTL-SDR for Hydrogen Line detection (pdf warning). 

Hydrogen atoms randomly emit photons at a wavelength of 21cm (1420.4058 MHz). Normally a single hydrogen atom will only very rarely emit a photon, but since space and the galaxy is filled with many hydrogen atoms the average effect is an observable RF power spike at 1420.4058 MHz. By pointing a radio telescope at the night sky and integrating the RF power over time, a power spike indicating the hydrogen line can be observed in a frequency spectrum plot. This can be used for some interesting experiments, for example you could measure the size and shape of our galaxy. Thicker areas of the galaxy will have more hydrogen and thus a larger spike.

In his tutorial Adam discusses important technical points such as noise figure and filtering. Essentially, when trying to receive the hydrogen line you need a system with a low noise figure and good filtering. The RTL-SDR has a fairly poor noise figure of about 6dB at 1420MHz. But it turns out that the first amplifier element in the receive chain is the one that dominates the noise figure value. So by placing an LNA with a low noise figure right by the antenna, the system noise figure can be brought down to about 1dB, and losses in coax and filters become negligible as well. At the end of the tutorial he also discusses some supplementary points such as ESD protection, bias tees and IP3.

One note from us is that Adam writes that the RTL-SDR V3 bias tee can only provide 50mA, but it can actually provide up to 200mA continuously assuming the host can provide it (keep the dongle in a cool shaded area though). Most modern USB 2.0 and USB3.0 ports on PCs should have no problem providing up to 1A or more. We’ve also tested the LP5907 based Airspy bias tee at up to 150mA without trouble, so the 50mA rating is probably quite conservative. So these bias tee options should be okay for powering 2xLNA4ALL.

Finally Adam writes that in the future he will write a paper discussing homebrew hydrogen line antennas which should complete the tutorial allowing anyone to build a cheap hydrogen line radio telescope.

Over on his blog DK8OK has created a post that explains how European SDR users can use their devices to monitor reflections coming off the Graves space radar. Graves is a space surveillance radar based in France which is designed to track spacecraft and orbital debris.

If you are in Europe you can also make use of the Graves radar simply by tuning to its frequency of 143.050 MHz and listening for reflections of its signal bouncing off things like meteors, planes and spacecraft. Since Graves points its signal upwards, it’s unlikely that you’ll directly receive the signal straight from the antenna, instead you’ll only see the reflections from objects.

DK8OK also explains in his post how you can use SDR-Console V3 to create a level diagram which shows power vs time, allowing you to count reflections and visualize the response of the reflection.

Any SDR that can tune to VHF frequencies such an an RTL-SDR can be used for monitoring reflections like this. If you aren’t in Europe you might consider looking for distant strong transmitters such as for TV/FM which you could also monitor for reflections.

A few days ago a University research paper titled “Searching for giga-Jansky fast radio bursts from the Milky Way with a global array of low-cost radio receivers” was uploaded to the Cornell University Library. In this paper authors Dan Maoz of Tel-Aviv University and Abraham Loeb of Harvard suggest that citizen science enabled mobile phones and RTL-SDR dongles placed around the world could be used to detect fast radio bursts (FRBs) originating from within our own galaxy. The abstract reads:

If fast radio bursts (FRBs) originate from galaxies at cosmological distances, then their all-sky rate implies that the Milky Way may host an FRB on average once every 30-1500 years. If FRBs repeat for decades or centuies, a local FRB could be active now. A typical Galactic FRB would produce a millisecond radio pulse with ~1 GHz flux density of ~3E10 Jy, comparable to the radio flux levels and frequencies of cellular communication devices (cell phones, Wi-Fi, GPS). We propose to search for Galactic FRBs using a global array of low-cost radio receivers. One possibility is to use the ~1GHz communication channel in cellular phones through a Citizens-Science downloadable application. Participating phones would continuously listen for and record candidate FRBs and would periodically upload information to a central data processing website, which correlates the incoming data from all participants, to identify the signature of a real, globe-encompassing, FRB from an astronomical distance. Triangulation of the GPS-based pulse arrival times reported from different locations will provide the FRB sky position, potentially to arc-second accuracy. Pulse arrival times from phones operating at diverse frequencies, or from an on-device de-dispersion search, will yield the dispersion measure (DM) which will indicate the FRB source distance within the Galaxy. A variant of this approach would be to use the built-in ~100 MHz FM-radio receivers present in cell phones for an FRB search at lower frequencies. Alternatively, numerous “software-defined radio” (SDR) devices, costing ~$10 US each, could be plugged into USB ports of personal computers around the world (particularly in radio quiet regions) to establish the global network of receivers.

‘Fast radio bursts’ or FRBs are very brief pulses of extremely strong radio waves which have the transmit power of 500 million suns, though by the time they reach the earth they can only be picked up by radio telescopes. Radio astronomers have so far been mystified by the cause of these FRBs, and research has been hampered by the fact that the source of FRBs is notoriously difficult to pinpoint because they are unpredictable, and their energy appears to originate from all over the sky and not from a single point. Many scientists think that most FRBs must originate from outside of our galaxy, and in 2016 one was finally pinpointed as coming from a dwarf galaxy 2.5 billion light years away from earth. But the authors of the paper speculate from the rate of how often FRBs are seen, that our Milky Way galaxy could host its own local FRB event once every 30 – 1500 years.

If an FRB occurs within our own galaxy then they speculate that the received power could be strong enough to be detected by consumer level mobile phones or RTL-SDR radios, meaning that no large radio telescope dish is required for detection. By continuously monitoring for FRBs on mobile phones and/or RTL-SDRs spread around the world, a local FRB source could one day be pinpointed thanks to the high resolving power of multiple detectors spread apart.

Over on the Thought Emporium YouTube channel the team have uploaded two videos that may be of interest to radio hobbyists. The first video shows a nice overview about receiving NOAA weather satellite images. They explain everything from scratch for complete novice, so the videos are great for almost anyone to watch and learn about radio and SDR concepts. The blurb of the first video reads:

Over the past 2 months, me and my friend Artem have been building antennas to receive signals from weather satellites as they pass overhead. This video chronicles our progress through this project and goes through some of the science involved in working with radio and receiving transmissions. We explore how dipoles work and how to build them, and how we built our final double cross antenna. We used an SDR (software defined radio) called a HackRF to do the work of interpreting the received signals and then decoded them with some special software. We pulled images from 4 satellites: NOAA 15, 18 and 19 as well as METEOR M2. The satellites broadcast immediately as they take the images and no images are stored, so we’re likely the only ones on earth with these images.

The second video is about building a radio telescope. Like the NOAA video, they explain all concepts in a simple and easy to understand way, so that anyone even without any radio knowledge can understand what the project is about. In the video they also show how they use a 3D printer to create a tracking mount which can point a satellite dish. They then use the dish to create a satellite heat map. The blurb reads:

Over the last 2 months me and my friend Artem (you met him in the last video) built our first radio telescope. It was built mostly out of off the shelf components, like a satellite dish and Ku band LNB, as well as some parts we 3d printed. When all was said and done we had a system that could not only take images of the sky in radio frequencies (in this case 10-12ghz), but could also be used to track satellites. With it, we were able to see the ring of satellites in geosynchronous orbit, over 35,000km away, This is only the first of what I suspect will be many more telescopes like this. Next time we’ll be building ones that are far larger and can see things like the hydrogen lines so we can image the milky way.

Back in September 2015 we made a posted that discussed how some amateur radio astronomers have been using RTL-SDR’s for detecting pulsars. A pulsar is a rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. If this beam points towards the earth, it can then be observed with a large dish antenna and a radio, like the RTL-SDR.

In their work they showed how they were able to detect and measure the rotational period of the Vela pulsar, one of the strongest and easiest to receive pulsars. They also noted how using several RTL-SDR dongles could reduce the required satellite dish size.

Recently we came across Hannes Fasching (OE5JFL)’s work where he shows that he has detected 15 pulsars so far using RTL-SDR dongles. His detection system specs include:

Antenna: 7.3m homemade offset dish, OE5JFL tracking system
Feeds: 70cm (424 MHz) dual-dipole with solid reflector, 23cm (1294 MHz) RA3AQ horn
Preamplifiers: 23cm cavity MGF4919, 70cm 2SK571 (30 years old!)
Line Amplifier: PGA103+
Interdigital filter: designed with VK3UM software, 70cm 4-pole, 23cm 3-pole
Receiver: RTL-SDR (error <1ppm), 2 MHz bandwidth
Software: IW5BHY, Presto, Tempo, Murmur

Furthermore, from looking at the Neutron Star Group website, it seems that the majority of amateur radio astronomers interested in pulsar detection are currently using RTL-SDR dongles as the receiver. Some of them have access to very large 25m dishes, but some like IW5BHY, IK5VLS and I0NAA use smaller 2.5m – 5m dishes which can fit into a backyard.

If you are interested in getting into amateur pulsar detection, check out the Neutron Star Group website as they have several resources available for learning.

Earlier in April we posted about Hannes Fasching (OE5JFL)’s work in detecting pulsars with an RTL-SDR. Thanks to Steve Olney (VK2XV), administrator of the Neutron Star Group for pointing out that there are actually several amateur radio astronomers who are using RTL-SDR dongles for pulsar detection. 

A pulsar is a rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. If this beam points towards the earth, it can then be observed with a large dish antenna and a radio, like the RTL-SDR. Pulsars create weakly detectable noise bursts across a wide frequency range. They create these noise bursts at precise intervals (milliseconds to seconds depending on the pulsar), so they can be detected from within the natural noise by performing some mathematical analysis on the data. Typically a few hours of data needs to be received to be able to analyze it, with more time needed for smaller dishes.

One problem is that pulsar signals can suffer from ‘dispersion’ due to many light years of travel through the interstellar medium. This simply means that higher frequencies of the noise burst tend to arrive before the lower frequencies. Mathematical de-dispersion techniques can be used to eliminate this problem enabling one to take advantage of wideband receivers like the RTL-SDR and other SDRs. The more bandwidth collected and de-dispersed, the smaller the dish required for detection.

Over on the Neutron Star Group several amateur pulsar detection projects are listed, and entries denoted with the “^” symbol make use of the RTL-SDR. Below we show a brief overview of those projects:

Andrea Dell’Immagine (IW5BHY) – Based in Italy Andrea often uses a 3D corner reflector antenna which is equivalent to a 2.5 meter diameter dish to observe pulsars in the 70cm band (~420 MHz). The antenna is in a fixed position so he can only detect pulsars that drift into the beam width of the antenna. With this antenna, a 0.3dB NF LNA, an RTL-SDR and de-dispersion techniques he’s been able to detect the Pulsar B0329+54 which is 2,643 light years away with an integration time of about 3 hours.

Andrea has also used a 4M dish to detect Pulsar B0329+54 also at 70cm with an RTL-SDR. With the larger dish he’s able to detect it within about 40 minutes of integration time.

Hannes Fasching (OE5JFL) – Based in Austria Hannes has a 7.3M dish that he uses for pulsar detection with his RTL-SDR. With this large dish he’s been able to receive 22 pulsars at both 70cm (424 MHz), and 23cm (1294 MHz) frequencies. With such a large dish, detecting a strong pulsar like B0329+54 only needs less than a minute of integration time.

Mario Natali (I0NAA) – Based in Italy Mario uses a 5M dish to observer pulsars at both 409 MHz and 1297 MHz. Combined with a low noise figure LNA and his RTL-SDR he’s been able to receive the B0329+54 pulsar with an integration time of about 2 – 2.5 hours.

Michiel Klaassen – From the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory in the Netherlands Michiel has used their large 25M dish and an RTL-SDR to detect B0329+54 at 419 MHz.

Peter East & Guillermo Gancio – Peter and Guillermo have used the large 30M dish at El Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía (IAR) in Argentina and an RTL-SDR to detect the Vela pulsar (B0833-45) at 1420 MHz.

In terms of hardware required, from the above projects we see that you’ll need an RTL-SDR dongle (other more costly SDR’s could also be used), a dish as large as you can get (along with some sort of dish pointing system), a low noise figure amplifier (0.5dB or less is desired) to be placed right by the dish, a few line amps if the cable run is long and perhaps a filter if you are seeing interference from terrestrial signals.

An overview of software for detecting pulsars with the RTL-SDR can be found over on the Neutron Star Groups software page. Essentially what you need is an analysis program which can work on the raw IQ data that is collected by the RTL-SDR and dish antenna. This software ‘folds’ the data, looking for the regular noise bursts from the pulsars. The output is data that can be used to create a graph indicating the spin period of the pulsar, and thus confirming the detection.

Over on our forums Andy (M0CYP) has posted about his new meteor scatter detection program which works with HDSDR and any supported SDR like an RTL-SDR. It works in an interesting way, as instead of analyzing sound files for blips of meteor scatter activity it analyzes screenshots of the HDSDR waterfall. The software automatically grabs the screenshots and determines if a signal is present on any given frequency. You can set a preconfigured detection frequency for a far away transmitter, and if the waterfall shows a reflection it will record that as a meteor.

Meteor scatter works by receiving a distant but powerful transmitter via reflections off the trails of ionized air that meteors leave behind when they enter the atmosphere. Normally the transmitter would be too far away to receive, but if its able to bounce off the ionized trail in the sky it can reach far over the horizon to your receiver. Typically powerful broadcast FM radio stations, analog TV, and radar signals at around 140 MHz are used. Some amateur radio enthusiasts also use this phenomena as a long range VHF communications tool with their own transmitted signals. See the website www.livemeteors.com for a livestream of a permanently set up RTL-SDR meteor detector (although that site does not use Andy’s software).

Andy writes that his meteor scatter detection software is still in beta so there might be some bugs. You can write feedback on the forum post, in the comments here, or contact Andy directly via the link on his website.