Build your own radio telescope to listen to meteors #backtoschool adafru.it/dQU This project would be a perfect school activity- you can get the lesson plans here. Via Science Friday. The Perseids are a favorite meteor shower of many Northern Hemisphere skywatchers, especially during the mild summer nights of August. But if you can’t get outside or if you’re clouded out, you can still listen to the meteor shower any time of day using a simple FM radio. Meteors are caused by small bits of dust and rock from space hitting the Earth’s atmosphere and burning up upon entry, producing a flash of light. Earth gets hit with approximately 40 tons of this stuff a day on average, but that increases during a meteor shower event as the earth goes through a stream of debris left behind by a comet (in the case of the Perseids, it’s Comet Swift-Tuttle). When that little bit of natural space debris burns up in the atmosphere, it flashes briefly, creating a “shooting star” to marvel at if you have clear, dark skies. It also briefly leaves a trail of charged particles behind. Turns out, those charged particles can reflect radio waves from distant television and radio stations, temporarily boosting their signal from afar. These radio waves are what you can detect with a simple radio receiver. Read more: adafru.it/dQU
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 20:18:01 +0000
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