The Outsider's Inside View post#010 - Breaking and Entering

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Profile KevinDouglasPhD
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Message 537172 - Posted: 26 Mar 2007, 17:47:52 UTC

It's Spring Break on campus, which doesn't mean anything different for SETI@home people, except maybe our student workers. It means reduced bus service, though. I don't even know if the buses run this Friday, since it's a state holiday (Cesar Chavez Day). My son has his Spring Break in a couple weeks, so maybe I can take a day off then. I'm going on a field trip with his class to Sacramento next week. That should be fun.

Six more SETHI cubes finished over the weekend, so there are only 38 left to go. I'm making a big mosaic with the 106 cubes done so far, which should look interesting. It might take about 6 hours to finish, at the rate it's going right now.

Looking forward to having more Arecibo data to reduce starting tomorrow. Over the weekend they were doing radar experiments, so ALFA wasn't in use. According to the current schedule, the TOGS project will collect data for all but 3 nights over the next 4 weeks (TOGS runs commensally with projects A2010 and A2048 if you care to check out the schedule). So that means a lot more SETI@home data too; in fact SETI@home will also run during the Pulsar project P2030, so we'll have a lot of data ready once the client is ready for release.

Only 2 weeks to go in the NHL regular season. The playoff races are really interesting too. The Eastern conference is especially tight. What's great is that nobody knows yet who they might play in the first round, although a few teams can count on having home-ice advantage. I'm glad the VS network is planning to have a lot of live coverage of games.

I was going to write something about there being an election in Quebec, but I'd probably just go off on a tangent about the lack of good coverage of international news in American media, so it's best not to go there.
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Message 537202 - Posted: 26 Mar 2007, 18:59:37 UTC
Last modified: 26 Mar 2007, 19:06:29 UTC

Hi Kevin,

Once you've completed your SETHI analysis, and written it all up, will it be available on the internet for interested members of the general public to view? Would we understand it or would a bit of background reading come in handy?

Thanks for the link to the schedule, interesting....

PS If you do get to have a day off with your son, I hope you both have a good time, otherwise just enjoy the break.
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Message 537553 - Posted: 27 Mar 2007, 14:35:23 UTC


Thanks For The Post Kevin and 'ave a Great Time durin' your Break ;)
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Message 537604 - Posted: 27 Mar 2007, 21:16:51 UTC
Last modified: 27 Mar 2007, 21:21:37 UTC

This is the first unusual radio information seti has recieved in 1977.

Can someone tell what happened with this and from what star did they receive this?

And what are these numbers telling? Has this particular information ever solved?
Mandtugai!
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Message 537605 - Posted: 27 Mar 2007, 21:20:18 UTC - in response to Message 537604.  
Last modified: 27 Mar 2007, 21:36:11 UTC

This is the first unusual radio information seti has recieved in 1977.

Can someone tell what happened with this and from what star did they receive this?

And what are these numbers telling?


More info here: Wow! signal
The location of the signal was, at (epoch J2000.0)
Right Ascension (On the positive horn): 19h25m31s +/- 10s
Right Ascension (On the negative horn): 19h28m22s +/- 10s
Declination (Is the same for both horns): -26d57m +/- 20m


and here: Explanation of the Code "6EQUJ5" On the Wow! Computer Printout
Thus, the "6EQUJ5" code in channel 2 means successive intensities as follows:
6 --> the range 6.0 - 6.999...
E --> the range 14.0 - 14.999...
Q --> the range 26.0 - 26.999...
U --> the range 30.0 - 30.999...
J --> the range 19.0 - 19.999...
5 --> the range 5.0 - 5.999...


and some more here: Still no sense in signal
Since 1977, other radio astronomers have looked at that spot on the sky in the hope of a repeat performance, but to no avail.
The latest series of observations, described in the current issue of the Astrophysical Journal,
are more than a 100 times more sensitive than the original Ohio observations.
Grey and Marvel see two faint radio sources at the position that Wow came from but both are nothing unusual.
So, the mystery of the Wow signal remains.

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Message 537613 - Posted: 27 Mar 2007, 21:38:55 UTC
Last modified: 27 Mar 2007, 21:41:13 UTC

Thank you much!

Since then how many unusual signals being received by seti?

Probably that exists somewhere in seti.org but unfortunately that information likely located too deep in their website. I even found a complete denial from seti.org about such information. :D
Mandtugai!
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Message 538010 - Posted: 28 Mar 2007, 21:51:42 UTC - in response to Message 537202.  

Hi Kevin,

Once you've completed your SETHI analysis, and written it all up, will it be available on the internet for interested members of the general public to view? Would we understand it or would a bit of background reading come in handy?

Thanks for the link to the schedule, interesting....

PS If you do get to have a day off with your son, I hope you both have a good time, otherwise just enjoy the break.


It's kind of ironic that I decided to add a link to the Arecibo schedule this week, since we recently heard that the observatory will very likely be stopping its observing for as much as 12 weeks, due to a much-needed painting upgrade of the receiver platform that dangles above the big dish. Since a large portion of my daily work consists of processing "fresh" data from the telescope, a spring break of my own is sounding more and more likely! :) I did buy a ticket to see Sleepytime Gorilla Museum in June, so I'll finally get to see that band live.

Here are a couple pictures of the full-Arecibo-sky mosaic that I made on Monday:




I had to split it in half since we see 360 degrees of right ascension but only about 30 degrees of declination. Anyway, this is one slice of a big datacube, and you can clearly see the two sections of the Galactic Plane that intersect the sky visible to Arecibo, as well as some nice HI structures further from the disk. I have every intention of making the datacubes public at some point. Given that more HI spectra are still being loaded into the database, there may and probably will be later releases of these cubes too. I think interstellar hydrogen is probably a concept most people with a rudimentary knowledge of science could easily grasp. My son does, more or less, so why not?

As for the WOW signal, the problem with that (and many other spurious signals) is that it wasn't found ever again. A key indicator that a radio signal is of extraterrestrial origin is that it can be observed at the same position at a later time to confirm it is astrophysical in nature. Most SETI candidate signals likely fail this simple test. Just today I removed, "by hand" (ie. non-robotically but still with a computer), lots of RFI from the HI data for our GALFA survey. This signal shows up at the same frequency over several days, but it's not associated with any one position on the sky. With SETI@home we really have to take care to make sure man-made signals don't cause false candidate signals. That's why the multibeam SETI@home is not quite ready for public release.

I got to process a few donation cheques today, including one for $2000. Yay! My hockey teams had a good night last night too, so I'm in a good mood.
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Message 538045 - Posted: 28 Mar 2007, 23:00:06 UTC


Thanks For the Post Kevin - "Eye Candy" . . . Great Work @ Berkeley - Thanks
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Message 538257 - Posted: 29 Mar 2007, 12:21:00 UTC - in response to Message 538010.  

...Here are a couple pictures of the full-Arecibo-sky mosaic that I made on Monday:

OK, from a quick glance:

Is that the galactic centre at 6h and the galactic limb at 20h ?

So what's the smudge forming at about 3h ?

Or have I got it all wrong?!


And why no operations during the repaint? Could not the receivers be locked in place and the structure locked in place and we just gather whatever data is picked up from that position?

This could be a very good chance for some nice continuous slow (Earth rotation) sweeps!

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Message 538351 - Posted: 29 Mar 2007, 16:20:49 UTC - in response to Message 538257.  

...Here are a couple pictures of the full-Arecibo-sky mosaic that I made on Monday:

OK, from a quick glance:

Is that the galactic centre at 6h and the galactic limb at 20h ?

So what's the smudge forming at about 3h ?

Or have I got it all wrong?!


Not wrong, but kinda backwards. The "inner Galaxy" is toward 19h; the Galactic Center itself is around 17.7 h RA, -29 deg DEC, so Arecibo can't see the very center. The part of the plane at 6 h is toward the Anticenter, and the smudge is a very interesting region near the Perseus & Taurus constellations, which contain a lot of star formation regions and large molecular gas complexes. We have some GALFA observations of this region that are spectacular. This "outer Galaxy" gas looks more extended because it's a lot closer to us than the spiral arm we see toward the inner Galaxy. Glad to hear people like the eye candy.

And why no operations during the repaint? Could not the receivers be locked in place and the structure locked in place and we just gather whatever data is picked up from that position?

This could be a very good chance for some nice continuous slow (Earth rotation) sweeps!

Regards,
Martin


Yes, we'd get a lot of good data for one declination over 12 weeks, wouldn't we? The answer as far as I know is that the old paint that has to be blasted off from the structure contains lead, and so they have to take a great amount of care to avoid any environmental (or human) impact in removing the old paint. To achieve this the entire receiver platform has to be covered. And it's vital to protect the receivers from contamination from dust during this work, so I think shutting down is the responsible thing to do.
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Message 538501 - Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 1:16:51 UTC

An excellent site for visualizing the (approximate) large-scale structure of the Galaxy is the Atlas of the Universe, particularly the 50000-LY page.

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Message 538527 - Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 2:42:01 UTC - in response to Message 538501.  





An excellent site for visualizing the (approximate) large-scale structure of the Galaxy is the Atlas of the Universe, particularly the 50000-LY page.


WOW! ... thanks very much for those links .... absolutely .. breathtaking !
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Message 538534 - Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 2:54:27 UTC - in response to Message 538527.  

An excellent site for visualizing the (approximate) large-scale structure of the Galaxy is the Atlas of the Universe, particularly the 50000-LY page.

WOW! ... thanks very much for those links .... absolutely .. breathtaking !

Added to the APOTD thread.
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Message 538552 - Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 3:49:53 UTC

thanks Misfit :)
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Message boards : SETI@home Staff Blog : The Outsider's Inside View post#010 - Breaking and Entering


 
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