Radio Astronomy in the Palm of Your Hand
When you think of a radio telescope, you usually think of a giant dish antenna pointing skyward. But [vhuvanmakes] built Wavy-Scope, a handheld radio telescope that can find the Sun and the Moon, among other things.
The build is relatively straightforward, using a commercial LNB to detect signals in the 10-12 GHz range. The detector is a simple satellite finder, although you could also connect it to a software-defined radio, if you wanted something more sophisticated.
The sci-fi style unit is 3D printed, of course, and made us think of a 1950s-era ray gun. There are several videos of the device in action, including one of it detecting the sun that you can see below.
One of the videos shows the instrument detecting otherwise invisible satellites. Of course, it will also detect anything that emits sufficient RF energy for the LNA to detect. When you aren’t using it to snoop on the sky, it would make a fair addition to your Halloween costume.
We’ve seen small radio telescopes before, but not this small. You probably won’t be tracking down hydrogen lines with this, but it could still be a lot of fun.
youtube.com/embed/IbHRXGjD830?…
