[HN Gopher] Wow@Home - Network of Amateur Radio Telescopes
___________________________________________________________________
Wow@Home - Network of Amateur Radio Telescopes
Author : visviva
Score : 183 points
Date : 2025-05-17 02:02 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phl.upr.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (phl.upr.edu)
| explodes wrote:
| This is so cool. As someone who used to run SETI@Home, this is
| exciting and I'll be doing what I can when they're ready for me.
|
| What is lacking, or I cannot find, yet, is steps for me to take
| or contribute.
| passwordoops wrote:
| From the bottom of the FAQ at the end of the page:
|
| How can I help?
|
| We welcome help, especially from those with experience in RFI
| shielding and software GUI development. Your expertise could
| make a big difference as we refine both the hardware and user
| interface. While we're actively pursuing funding to support the
| project long term, any assistance now would accelerate our
| progress and broaden the impact of Wow@Home. Whether it's
| technical support, outreach, or collaboration, your
| contribution matters.
| dmos62 wrote:
| At the risk of retracting from the really cool project, I notice
| that a lot of highlighted phrases in a text is indicative of an
| LLM writer. Not that I have anything against that.
| aspect0545 wrote:
| That would also fit because the image on the top is very
| clearly AI generated. I find that quite off-putting to be
| honest.
| stefanfis wrote:
| As long as the content is great, this doesn't matter at all. It
| helps especially non-native speakers a lot to clearly
| communicate their ideas. And it saves time for the important
| work. We should get used to it as fast as we can.
| multjoy wrote:
| If you're not going to write it, why should I read it?
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| No-one is forcing you to.
|
| Not everyone who has the knowledge of how to put together a
| radio telescope is also awesome at creating a website. It
| seems everyone is a critic, these days...
|
| And if you don't think that having an appealing website is
| at least as important as the content within when doing
| outreach, I may have a bridge to sell you.
| multjoy wrote:
| They don't need to be awesome, they just need to write
| their own words.
|
| If someone can't be bothered to write the copy for their
| project, what else have they handed over to an LLM?
| lucb1e wrote:
| > what else have they handed over to an LLM?
|
| A version in their own language or with lots of spelling
| mistakes that take people out of the story as well
|
| (Charitably, that is)
| Xss3 wrote:
| ChatGPT is a better writer than me. Simple as that. It
| takes my words and ideas and communicates them more
| effectively.
|
| They're still my words and ideas being fed to it. It just
| transforms them into something others enjoy reading. It
| asks me questions I forgot to answer. Etc.
| multjoy wrote:
| No it doesn't. It makes them average. It regresses as far
| as it can to the mean because that's what it does.
|
| It has no creativity, it cannot think. It has no idea
| what is right, only that it can make your input look like
| the corpus of data that it has been trained on.
|
| If you think that's better, then that's your look out.
| nullc wrote:
| I find ChatGPT is a fairly mediocre writer: It uses a lot
| of overwrought and exaggerated language that becomes
| fatiguing rather quickly.
|
| It's also frequently used by fraudsters and in spam, so
| you run a real risk of 'your' writing style giving
| unintended impressions when you rely on it.
| Xss3 wrote:
| When I say it's a better writer...I really mean it's a
| faster writer. It's a tool. You can ask for 15 variations
| on a sentence, ask it to be more or less concise, or to
| tailor it to a certain audience. Ask it for 5 ways to
| communicate a stronger feeling of X. Etc.
|
| If you just blindly ask it to write it isn't great. It
| has far greater writing ability than I do but it doesn't
| know what's good and what isn't, it needs guidance.
| bluerooibos wrote:
| That sentence sounds nice but what does it even mean?
|
| Does the value of written content come from it being
| written by a human, or the fact that it's enjoyable to read
| and/or transfers useful information/knowledge? Whether a
| person wrote it or not is irrelevant. It's almost like
| complaining someone used a typewriter instead of hand
| writing something.
| macintux wrote:
| If you're not going to write it in assembly, why should I
| use your software?
| Aachen wrote:
| You think that's why every sentence (outside of figure captions
| and intro) has a bold part? It's sprinkled throughout so much
| that it hinders regular reading (or maybe that's just me? I
| find it really hard to read any paragraph at normal speed and
| not get distracted and skip to a bold part only to be missing
| context) and anyone looking to read the important bit is not
| aided in any way
|
| I've also seen this on human texts, but only quite long ago
| ericye16 wrote:
| I would love to build something like this, but it looks like the
| project is not quite complete yet? And also I don't see anywhere
| on the page where I can sign up for updates.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Would recommend getting a Ham technician license, as it will
| prepare you to understand the LNA and filter hardware.
|
| Best regards =3
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5uV6zI_978
|
| https://github.com/AP-HLine-3D/HLine3D
|
| https://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/
|
| https://github.com/byggemandboesen/H-line-software
| explodes wrote:
| I reached out via email and got some more information and added
| to a mailing list. I'm glad they added the FAQ, it answers a
| few of the questions I had.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| The next step for a project like this would be to incorporate a
| better, perhaps bepsoke SDR device more focused on the astronomy
| to be performed as most small off the shelf RTLSDR dongles have
| pretty horrible frequency drift. The addition of a more stable
| local clock source, coupled with a GPSDO - GPS disciplined
| oscillator - would allow signals to be correlated in time across
| many stations and allow for some actual, albeit basic,
| interferometry / aperture synthesis.
|
| I think that is what is needed for some actual science to be done
| with this kind of hardware and community support - similar to the
| work done by amateurs hosting hardware to record sferics in the
| VLF bands that sync up over the internet to do lightning strike
| tracking.
| multjoy wrote:
| https://www.crowdsupply.com/krakenrf/discovery-dish
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The original v4 RTL-SDR has a 1PPM TCXO. The problem is, the
| tons of shady clones don't.
|
| As for the GPSDO, that should be easy to solve at least if the
| host platform is a Raspberry Pi - the SparkFun NEO-M9N board
| can be connected to the PPS input of the Pi. The problem is,
| that thing is _expensive_.
|
| [1] https://www.berrybase.de/sparkfun-qwiic-gps-breakout-
| neo-m9n...
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| I'm not an interferometry expert, so I don't know what level
| of precision is required, but usually a GPSDO takes a lot
| more than a PPS output.
|
| A PPS output makes for very accurate timekeeping over long
| time scales. A GPSDO is a very stable oscillator that gives
| you precise frequency.
|
| Disciplining your oscillator with a PPS signal would be much
| harder than with the typically used 10 MHz signal. And I
| don't think an RPi would do very good at putting out a highly
| stable MHz signal disciplined to a PPS input.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| This is a bit like a scaled down (in terms of telescope size)
| Project Argus [1]. You could probably use the SARA 'scope in a
| box' [2] to do it, too, which is slight;y cheaper than the
| projected cost ($350 vs $500) assuming you have a spare r-pi
| hanging around. The far lower cost of entry will probably make it
| a lot more popular though - not to mention finding satellite
| dishes of that size is becoming harder by the year..
|
| About 2 decades ago, I had a Project Argus setup taking up most
| of my back yard [3]. I moved to the US when Apple bought my
| company, and had it packed up to take with me, thinking (in my
| naivety) that all US dwellings would have way more space than the
| terraced house I was living in (in London) and I could use it
| there too. Gentle reader, I was wrong. That dish has remained in
| its packing crate since it arrived all that time ago.
|
| I leave the US to return permanently to the UK on 4th July (yes,
| yes...). Once I'm settled, bought a new house, and have the kids
| schooling sorted out, I'll definitely be looking to get it up and
| running again, to rise, phoenix-like, and stare boldly into the
| abyss once more.
|
| 1: https://www.setileague.org/argus/
|
| 2: https://radio-astronomy.org/store/projects/scope-in-a-box
|
| 3: https://imgur.com/pCJvp9C
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| > thinking (in my naivety) that all US dwellings would have way
| more space than the terraced house I was living in
|
| As you've no doubt discovered, this highly depends on where you
| live. In a major US city? You're going to pay a _premium_ for
| yard space. In rural Tennessee? Not so much.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| Oh $deity yes, I was rapidly disabused of the notion, given I
| was living in San Jose or Cupertino, or Mountain View, ... or
| anywhere in reasonable traveling time to the Apple campus,
| really.
|
| Going to buy a place by the beach in the UK, with a little
| (half acre or so) land, and plenty of _space_ (for Space :)
| now that I'm retiring. I have an interest in optical
| astrophotography too, so as low a Bortle sky as I can finagle
| given the other constraints (school proximity, wife's
| opinion, ...)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Perhaps an opportunity for more models like remote colocation
| of equipment, either for profit or non profit.
|
| https://starfront.space/
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| Thanks. I have a few remote sites on my list for where to
| go eventually, but I'd not come across this one.
| spacecadet wrote:
| This is awesome! Built a radio telescope during covid thanks to
| someone posting some cool raspberry pi project here on hacker
| news.
| spaceport wrote:
| Does not need... gets wallet
| javiramos wrote:
| Nice to see that this project came from the University of Puerto
| Rico! The university has a cluster of activity in astronomy
| thanks to the legacy of the Arecibo telescope.
| rovr138 wrote:
| eso es!
|
| Seeing the title I was a bit bummed seeing radio telescopes and
| what happened with the radio telescope there. Clicking the
| link, I was really happy to see upr.edu domain and then the
| title, 'PHL @ UPR Arecibo'.
|
| I like the legacy that the radio telescope has left behind and
| I'm very happy to see others there working with radio.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-17 23:01 UTC)