Zero Point: Visualizing 16.7 MHz Celestial Radio Sources:

This evening was spent processing the Ukraine Russia Radio Telescope Database and extracting celestial coordinates, spectra and signal strengths for 16.7 MHz RF Celestial RF Emitters. Results were obtained for the following numbers of objects:

Quasars: 118
Galaxies: 142
Galaxy Clusters: 15

Subtotal: 275

Other Grade A Emitters: 749 // high quality measurements
Other Grade B Emitters: 596 // medium quality
Other Grade C Emitters: 510 // lower quality

Subtotal: 1855

Grand Total: 2130 celestial radio sources

This required many computational operations, data verification and conversion passes. Scripts were written that convert the raw catalog into a consistent, normalized and usable form.

Now that the database is ready, I intend to plot these radio sources in Google Sky so we can “see” their distribution and galactic neighborhoods. M31, Andromeda, is my focal point, but I’m very excited to have many sources to consider. Color=Frequency, Size=PointingRolloff, Brightness=Flux. It will take me a few days to produce the KML channel. Unix makes cleaning and sifting through the data much easier. This will help us know where to point our software radio antennas. Wish me luck.