Microwave meter videos

I made a few videos of the simple microwave / 2.4GHz meter dealing with work office's microwave oven--woe be unto whomever hangs around the hinge.

The first is a full examination of the space of the microwave oven, and is entirely inappropriate for those with short attention spans (stick to the second video, you).



This one is a short proof the detection is when the microwave oven is busily heating my hot water for tea.



The other amazing news is there is a very strong microwave signal that the northwest corner of the roof of Ryerson intercepts that appears to be coming from either the Admin building or the hospital: it strongly peaks in the southwest direction, almost pegs the meter on the 200mV scale, and when I added a headphone to the meter I could audibly hear some sort of signal that reminded me of a TV video sync noise.
What is this signal? Am I hearing a horizontal sync? Or is there some other signal that has a repetitive sync noise that runs at 12-18 kilohertz?

Chicago FM radio band scan

Here's a band scan of all FM radio stations heard Wednesday night in Chicago with a Degen 1103. I attached it to two random length wire dipoles, oriented north/south and east/west and could switch between the two.

I used V-Soft's signal strength database to ID the strongest stations. This helps when not all stations are in Chicago.

For medium and low strength stations, I used the FCC database for various queries:
for all stations within 100km of me, for instance, click here.

You can get radio coverage maps from the FCC, or more refined maps from Radio Locator that show how likely it is to pick up the station.

Antenna is the orientation of the dipole; so the note "east/west" means the wire is strung east/west and sensitive to signals coming from the north or south.
Station IDs were either heard, inferred from strength, music type, from the list of Chicago stations, or best guess from distant station lists.

Frequency Call sign Strength Antenna notes  
87.7 WLFM-LP   spanish news (tv carrier) 
88.1 WCRX  east/west dance mono 
88.1 WSSD  north/south R&B / announcer talking over song 
88.5 WHPK-FM strong  "very local, college" 
88.9 WIIT weak east/west college 
89.3 WKKC   smooth music 
89.5    hip-hop 
89.7 WONU   Christian 
90.1 WMBI-FM strong  Christian 
90.5 WRTW?   rap 
90.7 WAUS weak  classical 
90.9 WDCB  north/south  
91.1 WGSI weak  focus on the family / fox news / faint music  
91.5 WBEZ strong   
91.9 WJCH   piano music 
92.3 WPWX   rap 
92.5  clear (trace)   
92.7 WCPT    
93.1 WXRT-FM    
93.3  clear (trace) north/south  
93.5 WVIX   spanish 
93.9 WLIT-FM   talk 
93.7 WTRX-FM or WBCT  north/south country 
94.1  clear (trace)   
94.3 WJKL   christian 
94.7 WLS-FM   rock 
94.9  clear (trace)   
95.1 WIIL    
95.5 WNUA   jazz 
95.7  clear (trace)   
95.9 WEFM or WERV-FM  east/west jazz 
96.3 WBBM-FM   rock? 
96.5  clear   
96.7 WSSR    
97.1 WDRV    
97.3 WQBW? faint  "Milwaukee, WI 104mi" 
97.5 WHMS   lite 
97.9 WLUP-FM   MISSING? 
98.1 WIBN or WZOE  north/south "seeger, classic hits radio online" 
98.3  strong  local CPU 
98.7 WFMT   classical 
98.9 WBYR   "fort wayne, IN ""The Bear"" 153mi range" 
99.1 WXTT  east/west "Extra rock Danville, IL 114mi" 
99.5 WUSN   country 
99.9 WCPQ strong   
100.3 WILV   70's  
100.5  clear (trace)   
100.7 W264BF  east/west Christian 
101.1 WKQX   alt 
101.3  clear   
101.5 WBCH? WBNQ? WNSN?   modern WBCH? WBNQ? WNSN?
101.9 WTMX   R&B 
102.1  clear (trace)   
102.3 WYCA  east/west gospel 
102.7 WVAZ   love or Christian 
102.9  clear (trace)   
103.1 WVIV-FM   spanish 
103.5 WKSC-FM   modern/dance 
103.7  clear (trace)   
103.9 WXRD  east/west rock (political) 
104.3 WJMK   rock 
104.5  clear (trace)   
104.7 WCFL  east/west christian 
105.1 WOJO   spanish 
105.5 WJLE   country 
105.9 WCFS-FM   country 
106.3 WSRB   hip-hop 
106.7 WPPN   spanish 
106.9 WXXC   Marion, Indiana!
107.1 WZVN   rock 
107.5 WGCI-FM   hip-hop 
107.9 WLEY-FM   spanish 

Since formatting is horrible, here is the Excel spreadsheet.

If a frequency is not listed, it was a channel subject to bad interference from a neighboring station.

The idea of finding the clear channels is to find one suitable for meteor scatter work: a normally too-distant station (because it is over the horizon) can suddenly boom in because the signal is reflected from a ionized meteor trail halfway between the listener and broadcaster.

Some interesting results: WXXC and WBYR, located in Marion and Fort Wayne, IN, at 150 miles away.

Moon, Icicles, and the observatory

Click to enlarge

Re: Interesting development

The anagram was "HAT found a Neptune", if you were curious, the second Neptune class exoplanet found. The preprint describes the discovery. The star is in the constellation Eridanus, just south of Taurus in the evening sky. It transits a metal-rich star from our perspective nearly every 5 days, is slightly above the mass of our Neptune, half the size of our Jupiter, orbits the star at only 4 to 5 million miles from the star and is quite warm at about 880K.

What's interesting is HAT has been taking data on this star for over four years before the announcement. The preprint suggests the transit wasn't detected until three years of data were combined to find the shallow dip of the planet in front of the star.

A point of pride is this star is scheduled to be monitored for transits by the next generation satellite Kepler.

EDIT: The star is GSC 03561-02092 and the planet is called HAT-P-11b. (in case you were wondering).

An interesting development at exoplanet blog Oklo

"Last night, I received a mysterious e-mail from Gaspar Bakos of the Harvard-Smithsonian CfA. It consisted of a single line:

A phaeton tuned fun"

http://oklo.org/?p=308

UPDATE: Just like the science discoveries of old, I believe the Hungarian-made Automated Telescope (HAT) has created an anagram. The exercise is left to the reader.

Very big image of Saturn

If you haven't seen this newly released image of Saturn yet, then by all means take a look.

Reprocessed Mirach's Ghost

I am never truly happy with processing images, just like Jennifer. This particular image has vignetting around the edges from the lack of a flat field. I applied the flat field for this image when processing.



But as always, this still lacks a certain tonal value around the star, in my opinion.

Here's the previous image: