Radio astronomy for everyone!
Celestial objects emit radiation in different wavelength ranges. Due to absorption by our atmosphere, essentially only visible light and radio waves reach us. Until now, the latter have been largely inaccessible to amateur astronomers, because radio astronomy has completely different requirements than optical astronomy. That has now changed! Thanks to the modular Spider concept, radio astronomy is now simple and straightforward!
Spider Advanced is the radio telescope for schools, universities, public observatories and astronomy clubs! The smallest model in this telescope series Spider 230C Compact is operated on an Astronomik mount, which is why it requires weather protection or must be dismantled in bad weather. The larger Spider Advance radio telescope, on the other hand, is supplied with a weatherproof mount. You can therefore leave this radio telescope outside once it has been mounted!
Primary focus parabolic antenna: The WEB500-5 antenna offers a large collecting area with low weight. The metal grid is held in shape by a rigid frame construction with a maximum error of less than lambda/20.
1,42 GHz optimized feed horn: Developed specifically for 1.42 GHz PrimaLuceLab radio telescopes, the H-FEED feed horn is designed for optimal illumination of the primary reflector allowing high gain and minimize side lobes and the spillover effect, thus obtaining the best possible performance from the parabolic antenna. The feed horn is designed to allow the reception of dual polarization with support for two professional Low Noise Amplifiers (LNA) for the 1.42 GHz frequency. The feed horn is positioned in the perfect point of focus of the antenna through a rigid support with 4 supports, in order to have low obstruction and with a focusing device to precisely focus and maximize the performance of the entire radio telescope.
Alt-az waterproof computerized mount: Radio astronomy can be made performed both by day and night time and even when cloudy, since the 1.42 GHz radio waves are not blocked by clouds. For this reason, in order to capitalize on this opportunity w have designed the new WP-200 altazimuth mount, completely waterproof, allowing you to leave the SPIDER 500A radio telescope permanently installed outside. Equipped with automatic tracking and goto system controlled by the radio telescope software, it allows you to frame with great precision the Universe radio sources and move the antenna with a continuous and precise tracking. The WP-200 mount has 200 Kg load capacity and a very high precision pointing and tracking (encoders read resolution 0,0015°). It is also equipped with a special electronic security system which "park" the antenna pointing the Zenith (the vertical position) when the wind exceeds 50 Km/h, so the radio telescope moves to the position that offers the lower resistance to the wind and it’s locked safely.
1420 MHz receiver: In order to get the best possible performance with the 2.3 meters diameter antenna of the SPIDER 230C, the new H142-One receiver has been specially developed, a 1.42 GHz superheterodyne type radiometer/spectrometer, double conversion (type UP/DOWN) with 62.5 MHz bandwidth (RF = 1.389MHz-1.451MHz) and 14-bit analog to digital converter. The H142-One receiver has spectrometer with 1024 channels (each 61 KHz) that are displayed and processed in real time by the control software supplied with the radio telescope. Thanks to the high gain and the low electronic noise of this receiver, the SPIDER 230C radio telescope is able to record many radio sources in the Universe.
RadioUniversePRO software: SPIDER comes with the new version of RadioUniversePRO software that is specifically designed to allow you to check all the parameters, operation and record various results with the radio telescope. RadioUniversePRO can be installed on a standard Windows computer and is compatible with Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10. The graphical interface provides a simple mode with integrated planetarium that shows, in real time, the position of radio sources in the sky, and then allows you to simply use the SPIDER radio telescope. At the same time RadioUniversePRO offers the possibility to activate the advanced interface which adds many options, customizations and typical functions of professional radio telescopes and are therefore particularly useful for expert users (that found in RadioUniversePRO the same modus operandi of the large-sized radio telescopes).
