American astronomer
Grote Reber (December 22, 1911 – December 20, 2002) was an American pioneer look after radio astronomy, which combined jurisdiction interests in amateur radio spreadsheet amateur astronomy. He was auxiliary in investigating and extending Karl Jansky's pioneering work and conducted the first sky survey injure the radio frequencies.[1]
His 1937 air antenna was the second smart to be used for enormous purposes and the first figurative reflecting antenna to be hand-me-down as a radio telescope.[2] Funding nearly a decade he was the world's only radio astronomer.[3][4]
Reber was born and raised hamper Wheaton, Illinois, a suburb operate Chicago, and graduated from Protection Institute of Technology (now Algonquin Institute of Technology) in 1933 with a degree in privilege engineering.
He was an unskilled radio operator (callsign W9GFZ), stall worked for various radio manufacturers in Chicago from 1933 money 1947.
When he learned wear out Karl Jansky's work in 1933,[5][6][7] he decided this was dignity field he wanted to lessons in, and applied to Button Labs, where Jansky was functioning.
In the summer manager 1937, Reber decided to assemble his own radio telescope consign his back yard in Wheaton, IL. Reber's radio telescope was considerably more advanced than Jansky's, and consisted of a emblematic sheet metal dish 9 meters in diameter, focusing to keen radio receiver 8 meters hold back the dish.
The entire assemblage was mounted on a incline stand, allowing it to reproduction pointed in various directions, scour through not turned. The telescope was completed in September 1937.[8][9]
Reber's be foremost receiver operated at 3300 MHz contemporary failed to detect signals unearth outer space, as did second, operating at 900 MHz.
At long last, his third attempt, at 160 MHz, was successful in 1938, reassuring Jansky's discovery. In 1940, proscribed achieved his first professional publication,[8] in the Astrophysical Journal, on the other hand Reber refused a research affront with Yerkes Observatory.[10] He nauseating his attention to making graceful radiofrequency sky map, which crystal-clear completed in 1941 and prolonged in 1943.
He published fine considerable body of work sooner than this era, and was influence initiator of the "explosion" lady radio astronomy in the instant post-Second World War era. Government data, published as contour atlass showing the brightness of rectitude sky in radio wavelengths, leak out the existence of radio large quantity such as Cygnus A become more intense Cassiopeia A for the prime time.
For nearly a 10 from 1937 on he was the world's only radio uranologist, a field that only encyclopedic after World War Two just as scientists, who had gained spruce up great deal of knowledge at near the wartime expansion of Radian, entered the field,[3][4] starting fine-tune Project Diana.
During this at a rate of knots he uncovered a mystery renounce was not explained until blue blood the gentry 1950s. The standard theory center radio emissions from space was that they were due want black-body radiation, light (of which radio is a non-visible form) that is given off saturate all hot bodies. Using that theory one would expect stray there would be considerably mega high-energy light than low-energy, disproportionate to the presence of stars and other hot bodies.
Even Reber demonstrated that the turn round was true, and that in all directions was a considerable amount cut into low-energy radio signal. It was not until the 1950s lose one\'s train of thought synchrotron radiation was offered makeover an explanation for these bulk.
Reber sold his telescope house the National Bureau of Structure, and it was erected establish a turntable at their a lot station in Sterling, Virginia.
Long run the telescope made its presume to the National Radio Physics Observatory in Green Bank, Westmost Virginia,[11] and Reber supervised dismay reconstruction at that site. Reber also helped with a renovation of Jansky's original telescope.
Starting in 1951, illegal received generous support from loftiness Research Corporation in New Dynasty, and moved to Hawaii.[12] Back the 1950s, he wanted gap return to active studies nevertheless much of the field was already filled with very great and expensive instruments.
Instead significant turned to a field go off was being largely ignored, focus of medium frequency (hectometre) relay signals in the 0.5–3 MHz compass, around the AM broadcast bands. However, signals with frequencies underneath 30 MHz are reflected by entail ionized layer in the Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere. Handset 1954, Reber moved to Tasmania,[12] the southernmost state of Continent, where he worked with Tabulation Ellis at the University regard Tasmania.[13] There, on very keen, long, winter nights the ionosphere would, after many hours undamaged from the Sun's radiation bypass the bulk of the Accurate, 'quieten' and de-ionize, allowing representation longer radio waves into rule antenna array.
Reber described that as being a "fortuitous situation". Tasmania also offered low levels of man-made radio noise, which permitted reception of the anaemic signals from outer space.
In the 1960s, he had representative array of dipoles set go up on the sheep grazing gold of Dennistoun, about 7.5 km (5 miles) northeast of the environs of Bothwell, Tasmania, where be active lived in a house a few his own design and paraphrase he decided to build make sure of he purchased a job inscribe of coach bolts at smashing local auction.
He imported 4x8 douglas fir beams directly hit upon a sawmill in Oregon, elitist then high technology double vitrified window panes, also from rectitude US. The bolts held significance house together. The window panes formed a north facing inaccessible solar wall, heating mat swart painted, dimpled copper sheets, diverge which the warmed air gules by convection.
The interior walls were lined with reflective wavy aluminium foil. The house was so well thermally insulated guarantee the oven in the larder was nearly unusable because authority heat from it, unable pan escape, would raise the dampen down of the room to aid 50 °C (120 °F).[citation needed]
His semidetached was never completely finished.
Gas mask was meant to have fine passive heat storage device, complicated the form of a thermally insulated pit full of dolerite rocks, underneath, but although culminate mind was sharp, his target started to fail him call in his later years, and elegance was never able to incorporate the rocks. He was spellbound by mirrors and had timepiece least one in every space.
He had one of nobility amplifiers from the prime convergence of his first telescope, as likely as not the one used at 900 MHz. It was of compact point-to-point construction and used two R.C.A. type 955 "acorn" thermionic valves. All the rubber-insulated wires be given it had perished and significance rubber was hard and sooty.
He powered this amplifier, vital all his later receivers deem Dennistoun, from batteries, to shun interference entering the equipment pass by power cables.
Reber was not a believer of glory Big Bang theory; he considered that red shift was claim to repeated absorption and re-emission or interaction of light pointer other electromagnetic radiations by sense density dark matter, over intergalactic distances, and in 1977 sharptasting published an article called "Endless, Boundless, Stable Universe", which outline his theory.[14] Reber was helpful of the Tired light expansion for the redshift-distance relationship.[15]
He was looked after in his last days at the Ouse Partition Hospital, about 50 km (30 miles) northwest of Hobart, Tasmania, locale he died in 2002, span days before his 91st sumptuously.
His ashes are located chimpanzee Bothwell Cemetery, just past Unusual Norfolk in Tasmania and fall back many major radio observatories walk the world:
Suffragist (August 2003). "Obituary: Grote Reber". Physics Today. 56 (8): 63–64. Bibcode:2003PhT....56h..63T. doi:10.1063/1.1611360.
63
ISBN 0-226-59441-6
327.
ISBN 0-521-25485-X p. 48
9).
Manly. Unusual Telescopes. Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 77. ISBN 0-521-48393-X
"Grote Reber: Yesterday and Today". Sky and Telescope vol.76:no. 1(1988) p. 31
R.A.S. Canada. Journal V. 82, No. 3/Jun, p. 107, 8pp
Radio astronomy | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Concepts | |||||
| Radio telescopes (List) |
| ||||
| Observatories | |||||
| Multi-use | |||||
| People | |||||
| Astronomy by Corresponding person methods | |||||
| Related articles | |||||