First light Home-made cantenna at LRO 3/3/2024@14:00
Just plugged in my homemade cantenna and the trace below on ezRA software suite (Ted Cline, https://github.com/tedcline/ezRA) immediately shows evidence of the hydrogen line – amazing how well an old tin can can work as an aerial for 1420.405MHz!
The tape and cling film on the cantenna is to protect it from the weather and stop water collecting in the can – does not contribute to its effectiveness otherwise.
On photos below, you can see the cantenna was mounted on my Nooelec mesh aerial – this was just somewhere convenient to mount it in order to point it at the sky – the cantenna is NOT being using the dish in any way to collect signal and feed it to the cantenna – that is a future experiment where I turn the cantenna around and see if it can be used as a feed from the mesh dish but not being used that way today.
The feed on the last photo is made from a straightened safety pin cut to size and soldered on to the inside of a bulkhead-mounted N-type aerial connector.
Lichfield, UK
Andy
Hi Andrew, I’ve been following your cantenna construction project since I am trying to build one of my own. I’m running into some problems and I wonder if you can help. I am unable to see any signal difference between cold sky, and earth with my cantenna, are you able to make that distinction With your canna?
Thanks,
Jerry Taylor
Hi Jerry
I haven’t tried cold sky vs Earth but following link gives my follow up data from this cantenna over 12 hours demonstrating successful H-line mapping with it.
https://astronomy.me.uk/successful-detection-of-hydrogen-line-using-homemade-cantenna-at-lro-3-4-3-2023
Andy
Awesome!
Hello Andrew
My name is Francisco Javier Lemus and I am writing to you from Cadiz, a city in southern Spain.
I am a new member of SARA.
First of all I apologize for the grammar as I am using a translator.
Congratulations for the canteen.
I am just starting and I would like to ask you some questions in order to move forward, if you don’t have any problem.
Thank you.
Regards