Development of a Simple Home-Brew Radio Telescope

In this chapter, the design and construction of a simple home-brew radio telescope are illustrated. The radio telescope is built essentially from commercial off-the-shelf components. The main components include an offset prime-focus Ku-band reflector antenna, RF detector circuit, Arduino microcontroller, and a computer. To demonstrate the viability of the telescope, a drift-scan of the sun was performed. From the measurement, it is observed that the radiation signal from the sun has a peak power of –34.3 dBm, half power of –35.4 dBm, and a beamwidth of 3.13o. The impact of rain on the signal from the sky was also investigated. The result shows that there was a noticeable degradation of the power received. A significant amount of energy is absorbed by the dense water vapour in the atmosphere.