if you didn't know where to send the beam you would slew it around or focus it towards other areas in the cosmos that you deemed to be promising.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal
Wow! signal

Will never repeat.

---

I don't presume much in the way of ask-and-answer conversation. When I think about the network I envisioned I see it as more of a constant stream of input from everybody that finds it. There would be no one to ask specific questions of and no one to answer them.
We have nothing to offer anyone who could build a system like that except ourselves - our history and our cultures - and I can easily imagine other worlds as isolated as we are doing the same. It's a way to say "I existed" to a universe that would otherwise never know, and what you would get is a never-ending stream of that from every civilization that has fed into it.
In a relativistic universe it's easier for me to see something like that than a Dyson sphere or an empire built over millions of years. We're separated by too much time and distance to do much more than share who we were.

if you didn't know where to send the beam you would slew it around or focus it towards other areas in the cosmos that you deemed to be promising.

Sure, you could do that, and, if you were lucky enough to pick up something and reply to it, your descendants could pick up the conversation many years or even centuries later, if they even remembered you and what it was you sent. :)

We have no way to "phone" anyone in the cosmos and w/o a better way, a currently unknown way, "chit chat" would likely never happen. At this point in our development the very best we can hope for is one of two things: First, we actually detect a signal from ET likely sent many many years ago and try to understand it, and reply OR, second, if we're really lucky, ET comes to us, since we can't go to him, and we both try to communicate; our first try at "chit chat" would likely involve mathematics, a universal language, I think?

I guess I'm a pessimist? Well, SETI is a start, and we must try.

---

River Song (aka Linda Latte on planet Earth)
"Happy I-Phone girl on the GO GO GO"

Hi all,
there was a thread on this board with John D Anthony asking about what lies in the location opposite to WOW signal source: https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=78150

Unfortunately, there was not much talk about the exact thing asked in the question, but Michael Watson provided some information:

The opposite point on the celestial sphere should, I believe, be 7 hours, 17 minutes, 18 seconds by + 27 degrees, 3 minutes. That location is in the constellation Gemini, about as far from Alpha and Beta Geminorum (Castor and Pollux) as they are from one another, and to the South of Castor. b 2 Geminorum is a star similar, in some respects, to our Sun, near that location.

The thread is now archived and I can't reply there, hence a new one. What is b 2 Geminorum? And do we know any more of that now?

Thread now unlocked so you can post & wait for a reply

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Unlocked for new answers & comments

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

The opposite point on the celestial sphere should, I believe, be 7 hours, 17 minutes, 18 seconds by + 27 degrees, 3 minutes. That location is in the constellation Gemini, about as far from Alpha and Beta Geminorum (Castor and Pollux) as they are from one another, and to the South of Castor. b 2 Geminorum is a star similar, in some respects, to our Sun, near that location.

[...] What is b 2 Geminorum? And do we know any more of that now?

Don't know what "b 2" should be. The brightest stars of a constellation are enumerated by greek letters (Bayer designation) or a number (Flamsteed designation), e.g. "alpha Geminorum" or "1 Gemini" which is Castor; beta Geminorum... Pollux, ...). But only the bright stars of a constellation which are visible to the naked eye are enumerated this way. The vast majority of remaining stars got some catalogue number only in modern times (e.g. Hipparcos star catalogue).

The star nearest to the coordinates named by Michael Watson should be the following. With a magnitude of only 17 a good telescope is required to see it.

USNO-A2 1125-05001808; RA: 07h17m17.24s; DEC: +27°03'07.8"; apparent magnitude: 17.25;

http://wikisky.org/starview?object_type=1&object_id=1078743632

USNO supposedly means U.S. Naval Observatory; A2... eventually a catalogue; 1125-05001808 ... the ID within this catalogue. A minor star somewhere in the constellation of Gemini. Nothing special is known about it.

I got my data from a star chart in astronomer Jay Pasachoff's book 'Stars and Planets'. The star designated b2 Geminorum is also known as 65 Geminorum. I don't know why Pasachoff didn't use this usual, compact designation for the star.

It's a fifth magnitude star, about 383 light years, away. It's a K class (orange) star. Unfortunately, as it turns out, its a swollen orange giant star, well past the main sequence. Not at all promising as an abode for life. The full designation is K2III. I had assumed it was a main sequence orange star, a bit smaller than the Sun, and longer-lived.

It could be that the Wow Signal was actually directed at Earth, from a relatively nearby space vessel, given its very high signal strength ( 5 sigma above background noise). Contrary to the usual thinking in the SETI community, such a signal could be an intentionally 'one-shot' affair, rather than repeated at intervals. This would tweak our curiosity, without delivering the entire shock of extraterrestrial contact, all at once. A certain ambiguity was maintained.

If we'd been prepared to respond to the signal at the time it was received, we might have been deemed ready for open, continued contact, then, in 1977.

It could be that the Wow Signal was actually directed at Earth, from a relatively nearby space vessel, given its very high signal strength ( 5 sigma above background noise). Contrary to the usual thinking in the SETI community, such a signal could be an intentionally 'one-shot' affair, rather than repeated at intervals. This would tweak our curiosity, without delivering the entire shock of extraterrestrial contact, all at once. A certain ambiguity was maintained.

I read Wow signal's printout "6EQUJ5"... (0...9A...Z) translates to a signal strength (of "U") of at least 30 sigma above background noise... a remarkably strong signal.

If we'd been prepared to respond to the signal at the time it was received, we might have been deemed ready for open, continued contact, then, in 1977.

Will we ever be prepared? Who should decide within seconds, hours, days...: Answer the call or not? Difficult philosophical questions...

There's some ambiguity with the coordinates as well. The Big Ear radiotelescope back then used two horn feed antennas ("positive" and "negative" horn), aiming at slightly different spots. The Wow signal was only received by one of two feeds, but it's unknown by which one. It's also unknown why the Wow signal didn't also appeared in the first or second beam as well around ~150 seconds earlier resp. later (due to movement of celestial sphere). Eventually a short-term transmission...

So there are two potential coordinates for the origin of the Wow signal in the constellation Sagittarius:

• pos horn: RA 19h25m31s +/- 10s, DEC: -26°57' +/- 20'
  
• neg horn: RA 19h28m22s +/- 10s, DEC: -26°57' +/- 20'
  

I fear mankind has to wait until such an event repeats and hopefully there will be more sophisticated receivers then, listening, recording, and able to decode modulated information, something the Big Ear narrowband receiver was not capable of in 1977.