Automated Hydrogen-Line 4.5m Radio Telescope

Background -

The radio telescope was a student project that I started in January 2018. It began with a simple interest in radio astronomy, the original system had a budget of $300 and consisted of plywood, linear actuators, and a commercial satellite receiver. After months of fundraising and gaining the support of the physics department, we had $1500 to work with. Naturally, I upgraded the design of the system and the size of the dish to match the budget. Our only goal at this point was to image the sun, however, I turned it into an engineering project that would give my team hands-on experience. I personally designed and fabricated the entire system, including mechanics, antennas, circuit boards, RF circuits, wireless communication system, embedded programming. I then led a team of students to assemble the structure and user interface software. The system was completed in a little over 3 months, a video can be seen below of this system in May of 2018. Following the success of the project, we were sponsored by Irvine Electro Optics and the Reynard Corporation. I immediately sourced a larger dish for higher resolution and specified out a design for an RF circuit capable of detecting the 21cm line (atomic Hydrogen). I then directed the team to design 21cm RF patch antennas for a phased array. Today the system has a 4.5m dish and features a fully automated imaging/tracking software that we wrote from scratch. We have plans to build a second system in order to build a baseline interferometer. Currently, it is the largest system of its kind in all of Southern California. I used Solidworks to design the structure and Eagle to design the circuit boards,

About The System -

The system has 7 custom circuit boards each monitoring the performance of various aspects of the system, performing signal conversions, controlling motors, or measuring atmospheric conditions. In total the system capture data from over 30 sensors that are transmitting wirelessly to the nearby observatory for instant diagnostics of the system. The system has two manual overrides for controlling the motors independent of software, features a real-time display of integrated power output, and has a database of all the star systems it has ever tracked. Initially, the system hooked up a spectral analyzer in order to measure Doppler shifts, however, our signal to noise ratio was so high we moved towards using software defined radios to capture our signals.  The software displays real-time information pertaining the performance, position, and signals coming from the radio telescope. From the software the user may plan image scans, manually point the telescope, or track object by either using the data base we builtin or by manually entering he coordinates. The software, electronics, and mechanics were designed and built entirely from scratch.

See below for photos and videos of the project development. The photos contain images of both the old and new system, there are currently only videos of the old system.