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Flying WV
West Virginia University Radio Astronomy Instrumentation Laboratory

Cohort archive

2018 The second summer

Six teachers redesigned the horn mount, ran eight Green Bank experiments, and taught three student groups. Two teachers returned from the previous year.

  • 6 teachers
  • 5 states
  • 2 returning
  • 6 weeks
  • Morgantown + Green Bank
DSPIRA teachers observing with a horn antenna at the Green Bank Observatory in 2018
Observing with a teacher-built horn at Green Bank.

Who was here

The 2018 cohort

Six teachers, two of whom had done the program the summer before and came back to go deeper. Two undergraduate researchers joined them for the season.

The 2018 DSPIRA teacher cohort assembled outdoors
The 2018 cohort.
  1. John Makous returning NC
  2. Howard Chun returning RI
  3. Alexis Emch WV
  4. Daniel Bonnette WV
  5. Tad Herman NY
  6. John Clarke FL

Joined by two undergraduate researchers, from WVU and Toronto

01

Foundation

The first four weeks again built foundations in astronomy and DSP through daily lectures. Astronomy covered the celestial sphere, astronomical and solar time, Kepler's laws, and the H–R diagram. Additional topics included galaxies, dark matter, and galaxy rotation curves. The DSP track followed an undergraduate course from signal basics through the fast Fourier transform.

The cohort reserved time for writing lesson plans and classroom activities. Teachers explored ways to incorporate signal processing into their existing classes.

02

The laboratory sessions

Every lecture was followed by a lab. This year the 2017 material was revisited, but far more time went on mastering it rather than getting through it. Software-defined radio makes abstract DSP concepts tangible. GNU Radio is free, open source, and runs on inexpensive hardware. Each teacher finished the lab sequence by writing a software spectrometer.

They soldered low-noise amplifiers from small components. They built horn antennas with materials and tools available at hardware stores. The horns were built in the industrial design workshop at WVU, again as an assembly line. Each teacher combined a spectrometer, LNA, and horn into a working telescope by the end of four weeks

One thing this cohort added: they designed and built a new iterative horn antenna mount themselves. At WVU, teachers measured LNA performance in the lab. They measured noise figures inside the RF room's Faraday cage.

The two returning teachers studied software-defined radio in greater depth. They learned GNU Radio's internals and wrote their own blocks and programs. They also streamlined data acquisition and built DSP teaching tools within GNU Radio.

  • The GNU Radio project logo
    GNU Radio — free, open source, and the same stack the lab uses on real instruments.
  • A surface-mount amplifier component a couple of millimeters across, balanced on a fingertip above a printed assembly sheet
    The parts you solder are a couple of millimeters across.
  • Macro photograph of an amplifier circuit board laid beside a ruler showing millimeter divisions
    Against a millimeter scale.
  • The industrial design workshop at WVU, with teachers working at benches
    The workshop at WVU, where the horns were built.
  • Two teachers laying out and marking sheet material for a horn antenna on a large table
    Marking out.
  • A teacher holding a length of timber cut for a horn antenna mount
    Cutting the mount — this cohort redesigned it.
  • Looking into the open end of a completed horn antenna, its internal bracing visible
    Looking into a finished horn.
  • Six completed horn antennas standing on their wooden mounts on the workshop floor
    The assembly line's output: one working telescope each.
  • Teachers testing two horn antennas on the grass outside a brick building at WVU
    First tests, straight outside the building.
  • Teachers working with laptops beside horn antennas in a covered doorway
    Data acquisition, worked out on the spot.

03

Science experiments

The horns were tested in Morgantown, then taken to the Green Bank Observatory for the last two weeks. Teachers completed the observatory's outreach program, including training on the 40 Foot telescope. They routed its signal through an SDR dongle into their GNU Radio spectrometer.

Most of the time went on observing with the horns. Teachers planned their own full-sky map. They also used the observatory's facilities to improve their instruments. Eight distinct experiments came out of the two weeks:

  • Comparative analysis of LNA performance
  • Comparative analysis of horn response
  • Optimization of horns
  • Optimization of data acquisition software
  • Analog data from the 40 Foot vs. the digital GNU Radio back end
  • Measuring the horn beam pattern
  • Milky Way velocity curve
  • All-sky map of neutral hydrogen
Teachers at work in an equipment room at the Green Bank Observatory, one of them writing at a chalkboard
Working through the observatory's own equipment.
Three horn antennas on wooden mounts under a canopy on the lawn at Green Bank, with teachers at laptops beside them
The observing site, set up on the lawn.
Horn antennas lit against the dark during a night-time observing run at Green Bank
Observing ran into the night.
Teachers gathered at a large circular opening in a concrete structure at the Green Bank Observatory
The observatory opened up more than its telescopes.
Horn antennas spread across the lawn beside a white canopy at the Green Bank Observatory
Two weeks of observing, inside the National Radio Quiet Zone.

04

Students and lessons

At Green Bank, the cohort worked with the West Virginia Governor's STEM Academy. Teachers turned their research experience into lessons and taught them. They taught radio astronomy DSP through practical activities over several days. Three separate student groups participated.

From the inside

Tad Herman kept a blog

One of the 2018 teachers wrote up the whole summer, day by day, as it happened.

Read the blog

05

Undergraduate research

Two undergraduates joined in 2018: Andy Dycke from the University of Toronto and Rhys Lockhart from West Virginia University. They took the same inexpensive horn hardware and pointed it at a harder problem: detecting radio transients.

They combined a horn array with custom data acquisition software to search for bright pulsars. This extended classroom telescopes into time-domain instruments.

An undergraduate researcher working at a laptop outdoors, a horn aperture array set up in the field behind him
Running the aperture array in the field.
Researchers working at computers in the lab on the pulsar detection data
And back in the lab, with the data.

Everything they used

Use the lessons online

50 lessons covering the astronomy, the hardware, the signal processing and the labs—free and maintained by the DSPIRA community.

Open the lessons site