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 230C is the radio telescope for amateur astronomers!
The parabolic antenna is composed of several sectors consisting of a rigid aluminium mesh with stiff struts. Just like an optical telescope, this antenna can also be mounted on a parallactic mount. For this purpose, it has a prism rail (Losmandy style) and matching counterweights. You can then control the mount (via ASCOM) using the RadioUniversePRO control software.
SPIDER 230C - Compact radio telescope - complete and functional instrument:
- WEB230-5 parabolic dish with support device for equatorial mounts
- EQ8 SynScan equatorial mount with Synscan and 2 counterweights
- Alignment optical finder system on mount counterweight shaft
- 50mm finder, 8 magnifications, with glass solar filter
- Mount tripod with central column
- H142-One receiver, radiometer/spectrometer, 1.42 GHz frequency
- 1.42 GHz feed-horn
- 2 high gain and stability 1.42 GHz LNA units
- RadioUniversePRO control and processing software
- User and installation manual (english and italian)
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.
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).
Comes with Skywatcher EQ8 mount and tripod.
