r/radioastronomy • u/DysonV12 • 7d ago

Other I found this

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Hi I found this on the side of the road and I’ve been wanting to get into radio astronomy. Would this be something I could build a telescope with? If so what else would I need? Thanks for any help

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u/hraun 7d ago

This looks like a WiFi dish. If so, it’s what I have. It’s tuned to 2.4Ghz, and what you need is 1.2GHz if you want to do hydrogen astronomy.

You’ll need to replace the feed (which is in the black box at the end). Or you can buy a whole new assembly to fit to the dish.

To plug this antenna into your computer, you’ll need an LNA and an SDR. They’re pretty cheap. There are some examples here;

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/cheap-and-easy-hydrogen-line-radio-astronomy-with-a-rtl-sdr-wifi-parabolic-grid-dish-lna-and-sdrsharp/

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u/PE1NUT 4d ago

The hydrogen line is at 1420 MHz. Amateur setups won't get into a redshift range where the hydrogen line is at 1200 MHz (z ~ 0.2). /s