Abstract Details
| Name: Kishore Affiliation: NITK Conference ID: ASI2017_1419 Title : Observations of neutral hydrogen line (HI 1420.40575 MHz) with an affordable radio receiver Authors and Co-Authors : Pritpal Sandhu, Indian Institute of Technology Indore Abstract Type : Poster Abstract Category : Instrumentation and Techniques Abstract : The neutral hydrogen line (1420.40575 MHz) is very abundant in our universe. The hyperfine emission of this radio line is due to the change in the energy state of neutral hydrogen. Harlod Ewen of Harvard University, under the guidance of Ed Purcell build a radio receiver which successfully detected this 21 cm line in 1951. With a motivation to replicate the same experiment with minimum expenditure, we designed a home brew radio receiver. Using this novel radio equipment: which consists of a horn aperture, inexpensive electronics, the 21 cm line can be easily detectable at the comfort of ones backyard. Here we presents the details of i) designing an inexpensive horn antenna, ii) details of the front-end & back-end receiver systems, iii) configuring the software pre-requesties to implement a radio receiver, iv) and finally the drift scan observations of neutral hydrogen HI line (1420. 40575 MHz) in our Galactic Plane (RA: 17h 45m 10s, DEC: -29o S). This setup can be used to demonstrate, motivate and educate the young student/amateur communities. This equipment and the developed receiver has the potency to monitor and continuously observe the galactic/extragalactic radio sources such as Cygnus, Cassiopeia to name a few and HI regions in our Galactic plane respectively. We also cover the detailed analysis of observed data with the conclusions and possible plans for future improvements. References 1. Purcell, Edward Mills and Harold I. Ewen, Observations of a line in the galactic radio spectrum. Nature 168:356, 1951 2. http://www.nrao.edu/whatisra/hist_ewenpurcell.shtml |