us3r

the name stuck sorry

  • he/him

professional procrastinator. computer enjoyer. 1-800-didge.


It's after watching these DIY videos on making your on radio telescope or other DIY stuff do I really appreciate the real thing. Cuz like, yeah you managed to capture a satellite in orbit but unless you knew what you were looking at it looks like a bunch of shitty pixels.

You have the picture in your head from these massive, professional facilities that took years of hard work and dedication to produce. Like yeah no shit it's a blob.


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in reply to @us3r's post:

I don't think I've ever watched a youtube video on making one's own radio telescope. But I have built my own out of a surplus digital TV tuner and wifi dish. It's lots of fun, and I learned a lot doing it. And one of the things one learns is knowing what stuff looks like.

You can do it too!

And maybe if I had a way to fabricate all this stuff like the gears and such, and the free time I'd give it a shot. As it stands it feels like in a weird way I don't make enough money to justify projects like that? I know that doesn't make sense. It's a mental thing or something.

You don’t need gears! I used a patio chair to point mine straight up and let Earth’s rotation move things. I’ve since dismantled it and reused most of the parts for other things. Like sitting in the patio chair last night…

Oh, huh. I guess I was basing my idea of it off of one person's youtube video. That's my bad there.

I imagine you'd still have to have a pretty unobstructed view of the sky and a lack of noise pollution to use it though.

Now that the site is dying I'd like to say it was cool of you to chime in with this. I'm not sure I'll DIY a radio telescope, or have the time and money, but I appreciate the encouragement.

I've gotten a lot of encouragement from others on Cohost, so I'm happy to pass it on! My local amateur astronomy club and ham radio club have people who DIY radio telescopes. If you ever do pursue it those might be places to find help, including gear. My dish had already been used by others for several ham projects.