Compact Astronomy Node (CAN)

A DIY radio telescope built using a paint can and an RTL-SDR dongle.

About

The Compact Astronomy Node (CAN) project aims to be a fun, educational radio astronomy project. That is open-source, and hopefully used by others. Inspired by PICTOR: A free-to-use Radio Telescope, the C.A.N. telescope is built from a 5L metal paint can, acting as a cylindrical waveguide. It uses a $30 RTL-SDR v4 with a 2.5 MHz bandwidth for signal processing.

The differnce between CAN, and radio telescopes like the Dwingeloo Radio Telescope (DRT) are the size of the dishes, better LNAs, and better SDRs.

Check out the PICTOR GitHub repository here and the PICTOR website here.

Example Experiment

Measure the 21 cm Neutral Hydrogen line at 1420 MHz (L-Band) to perform basic Hydrogen mapping of the Milky Way IE how many arms it has.

Materials

Refer to the Materials List for all components required to build the C.A.N. telescope.

TODO List:

Tasks:

Completed:

In Progress:

• Aquire Materials

To Do:

• Write GNU code for the SDR to record data -[ ] simple FFT, and save into a file - [ ] add flow chart into README.md
• Assemble Paint Can
  • basic testing
• Add instructions for assembly into the materials list
• Write a simple analysis script
• Write an observation script that uses the GNU Radio to record an observation
• Write an observation scheduler script to automaticaly run the observation script
• Write a script, and notebook to determine when the plane of the Milky-Way is in the field of view
• Write a script for continious drift scan observations for Hydrogen Intensity Mapping
  • Gets a pretty plot
• Combine scripts + a RaspberryPi into telescope backend
• Write a script for Pulsar folding, and stacking
  • with 2.5 Mhz of bandwidth this is Hard, and size of telescope
  • Try stacking Pulses
• Find location for permenant set up
• Write a theory_of_operation.md
• Expand README.md to be more engaging
• Make Website for telescope, have abililty to (easily) schedule an observation
• Make Youtube science content, and jupyter-notebook walkthroughs
  • Include theory of operation at varius levels
  • Simple Galactic Arm analyis + Dopler shift
• Test sensitivity in freqency band for weather satelites
• Make docker image? of analysis backend for easier reproduceabililty

License

GPL-3.0

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to fork the repository and submit a pull request. See the TODO list for tasks.