Radio Astronomy Software Defined Radio (Rasdr) | Hacker News Reader

Radio Astronomy Software Defined Radio (Rasdr)

radio-astronomy.org

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Are there Rydberg antenna SDRs for radio astronomy?

What sensitivity (?) is necessary to navigate by the EMF of stars?

FWIU this is called astronometry? There's probably a better word than "astral"?:

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44054783 :

> How many astral signals does a receiver need to fix to determine lat/long/altitude given the current time?

> How many astral signals does a receiver need to fix to determine to infer the current time, given geometrically-impossible triangulation and trilateration solutions given the known geometry of the cosmos and the spherical shape of the earth?

Great stuff, imagine doing radio astronomy with this more capable RFSoC SDR platform with 50% discount for academics at around USD2K [1]. It also has free textbook to go with it [2].

[1] RFSoC 4x2 Kit:

https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/university-program/aup-boar...

[2] RFSoC book:

https://www.rfsocbook.com/

Anybody has experience using rasdr4? What is it capable of?

It's a bit niche in the radio hobby, but very cool. That said, it is marketed to a very specific type of radio hobbyist which is probably best explained by looking at the first few sections of the manual, specifically around section 2a if you want to get a better sense of who this is for

User Manual: https://rasdr.org/release/1.2.4/RASDR-Users-manual-v1.7.5.pd...

I feel like 2a just says "It's for radio astronomy", is that what you mean?

Sort of. We have to understand what a SARA project is, how and where DSP would be employed, etc...hence why I mentioned its pretty niche. Radio astronomy, from my outsider understanding, is not something a newbie just walks in the door and picks up on. You have to have some experience with typical SDR use, data collection, etc.

> Radio astronomy, from my outsider understanding, is not something a newbie just walks in the door and picks up on.

Unless you're Grote Reber.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grote_Reber

Awesome read. Ty for sharing.

>For nearly a decade he was the world's only radio astronomer.

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