PART Telescopes – Bringing radio astronomy within reach of rural schools(parttelescopes.web.app)
99 pointsby openrockets6 hours ago10 comments
  • peterus5 hours ago
    Very interesting project, I'd be interested in seeing their system architecture in more depth and what tricks they used to bring the unit cost down.

    Another radio telescope project I saw a while ago """misused""" low cost universal GNSS receivers ICs (MAX2769) as their RF frontend, which I found to be novel since these chips operate in a weird performance regime of low resolution (1- or 2-bit output) but very high sensitivity.

  • bgoated016 hours ago
    Is the telescope design available anywhere for hobbyists to build? I can't seem to find anything in the article or in a separate search. I'd be interested in perhaps putting one of these together to do radio astronomy with my kids.
    • _Microft5 hours ago
      Maybe you like this:

      https://physicsopenlab.org/2020/10/10/a-simple-11-2-ghz-radi...

      The HN discussion (2020) about this can be found there:

      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26078761

    • Isamu5 hours ago
      Search on “diy radio telescope”, that gave me lots of projects and videos
    • superkuh4 hours ago
      edit: It looks like NASA is back selling Radio JOVE kits again. So this might be your only turnkey choice. It uses 2x large wire dipoles for 20.1 MHz for receiving Jupiter/Io radio bursts which you just view in a spectrogram on a computers (includes SDR receiver): https://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/kits/

      I think the SETI "Horn of Plenty" design is a pretty good way to get started with kids. The antenna itself uses metalized foam board with copper (or even aluminum tape) to make a pyramidal horn. Making the waveguide out of folded aluminum siding is a bit more kid dangerous (tin snips cutting sheet metal). And the actual antenna is a monopole feed placed in the waveguide. You'll still probably need an cheap ebay low noise amplifier, less cheap hydrogen line bandpass filter, a SDR receiver with a couple MHz instantaneous bandwidth and a computer. Cheap RTL-SDR usb receivers aren't great at 1420 MHz but they do work if you have a good filter. You'll have to decide on the receiver based on the processing toolchain you chose and it's requirements. Examples using GNU Radio https://github.com/ccera-astro or https://wvurail.org/dspira-lessons/

      The "science" output of this isn't very exciting to kids as it's just a spectrum plot for a point in the sky at the time showing how fast towards or away from us some of the hydrogen is going. But if you do it over many full sidereal days at different elevations and record the elevation w/time then you can make a nice looking "image" of the sky showing something useful.

      If your kids are older and ambitious take a look at the STARE2 project for detecting fast radio bursts which does actual honest to goodness publishable (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2872-x) radio astronomy with a meter scale horn+receiver setup. https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/magnificent-burst-within-... https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.05077 The secret sauce of STARE2 is math heavy calibration though.

  • armcat5 hours ago
    What an awesome story. Not too many stories about Aussies out there, but what Han brothers are doing with Unsloth in AI, and stories like this one, makes this fellow Aussie super proud!
    • unrvl225 hours ago
      I had no idea those dan and the team were aussies! damn nice, we dont really seem to shine in tech on the world stage.
  • ngriffiths5 hours ago
    I would have been all over this if we had one of these when I was in school. Very cool project.
    • ssgodderidge5 hours ago
      Honestly at $500 I still want one. I’d love to see the design open sourced!
  • qwertyforce3 hours ago
    fwiw pangram says it is 100% generated
  • bdangubic6 hours ago
    Can we have more stories like this on the front page please!
    • ameliusan hour ago
      Story didn't teach me much about how these things work, what the challenges are, etc.
    • Pay086 hours ago
      The vast majority of these kinds of stories are complete bunk.
      • bix65 hours ago
        Regardless of its bunk coefficient this is still exciting and inspiring, especially for students or low resourced people.
        • vlovich1235 hours ago
          If I understood correctly they mean that these uplifting stories end up not panning out and it’s more about publicity than accomplishing the thing. I’m genuinely curious about the kind of SDR that works for a price like this and how you fit it into a $500 BOM.
          • dylan6044 hours ago
            I think that might be a bit harsh. Have there been scams on Kickstarter and other type places? Sure. Are all of them scams? Doubtful. Some people just have no experience creating a viable company selling a product that they designed. It takes people by surprise by how expensive and difficult it can be. Sadly, they find out the hard way after spending all of the money raised on redesigns and other unexpected deviations from the happy path original plan. That does not mean they were a scam from the start though
      • fn-mote4 hours ago
        I hate to say it, but this is correct.

        Who in the world would have the expertise to operate one of these? In a “low resource” high school? The problem isn’t (just) having the equipment.

        There are so few teachers with enough knowledge to engage. Well-resourced, highly motivated kids might be able to read on line, but that’s a real stretch for the rest.

      • ssgodderidge5 hours ago
        Why? What do you mean by “bunk?” Do you have any examples you can point to?
        • deepspace4 hours ago
          Call me cynical, but pretty much 100% if the time when there is an article about "teen accomplishes almost impossible scientific feat" or "group of teens design world-saving product costing pennies", it turns out to be a disingenuous narrative pushed by some adult with an ulterior motive and often deep pockets.

          The complete lack of details in the article does not do anything for its credibility.

  • zamadatix5 hours ago
    It's a shame the title was so interesting, but not enough for a person to spend time write something about it in the body. Not just as a compare and contrast, but as a meaningful conveyance of the story and details. That's where a real article comes in - to be more than just an expansion of the original prompt.

    Does anyone know if there is an official site/repo/page for this project somewhere with info about the actual design?

    • Maxious4 hours ago
      https://parttelescopes.web.app/
      • tomhowan hour ago
        Thanks, we updated the link.
      • wizzwizz44 hours ago
        > Access setup guides and project resources through the documentation menu. We recommend starting with installation instructions, then following the software workflow for recording and processing data from RTL-SDR devices.

        But there is no "documentation menu" that I can find.

  • bluebands5 hours ago
    100% AI generated (and probably by someone affiliated with said team -- for the purposes of college apps)
    • 0xfaded3 hours ago
      In Australia (at least 15 years ago) you sit your exams and get a score. The universities then set a minimum score for each program based on expected enrollment and capacity. If your score is above the program score, you're in automatically. You only go through the American style interviews if you come in slightly below the bar and are hoping for secondary consideration. These highschool students are probably going to have no problem with their scores, so this is a moot point.