Chris Slack and Malinda McKay have signed on as NAAPO Summer Interns. They add greatly to the labor force at the RO during a time of great activity and development. Chris is a 1993 graduate of Greenfield High School, Greenfield, MA where he did an outstanding job with a radio astronomy related science fair project. He was introduced to us and we to him by Steve Willard — a newly found friend of the observatory and benefactor. Chris has been named the Jansky Intern and will be with us through the month of July. He starts his Freshman year at Clarkson University in upstate New York toward the end of August. Malinda is a Senior at Fort Hays Alternative High School in Columbus and expressed an interest in some work connected with the Observatory earlier in the year. Malinda has been named the Reber Intern for the remainder of the summer.

A new contract from NASA has begun at the Radio Observatory. The first annual installment in a three year project began June 1 with the financial authorization arriving July 1. This means a significant shot in the arm for the work of the RO and will allow obtaining a four million channel receiver with a bandwidth per channel of 0.6 Hz. The instrument is a SERENDIP III, based upon the model currently in use by the NASA SETI group. The observatory staff will now hold our heads a little bit higher.

The meeting began at roughly 10:02am. Those in attendance were Phillips, Barnhart, Childers, Ayotte & son, McKay & daughter, VanHorne, James, Campanella, Dixon, Schumacher, Chris Slack, and Bowling Green physics teacher Ron Stoner and his student Hemant Shukla. A general round of introductions for the benefit of the visitors started today's meeting.

Barnhart reports that he has received a grant proposal from Ken Ayotte, for equipment for his radio telescope research.

Dixon reports that we have received the new NASA grant of $100,000 a year for the next three years. He notes that while this is the largest grant we've ever received from NASA, it still does not pay for everything we do, and that the volunteers are just as important to the organization as ever. We will be purchasing a new 4 million channel spectrum analyzer of the "Serendip" design. This will produce a challenge in the areas of data storage and detection algorithms. He brought up the subject of a possible get-together at his new house for RO personnel.

Childers reports that he has taken some pictures of computer generated images of the "mystery source" he has been tracking, as well as of the hydrogen cloud he has been mapping. He also brings a photo-chronology of the cleaning out of the feed horns. He has been calibrating the narrowband channels to determine their gain. He also has all the computer programs auto-rebooting in case of power outages. The focus room air conditioner went out recently but was repaired within a day.

Ayotte reports that he may have a line on the possible donation of a VAX and associated documentation. He is still working on scanning the Ohio Survey into PC format.

Phillips reports that he has been busy doing light pollution work, but still intends on knocking down the old feed horn but as soon as the monsoon season has passed. He will also donate a software program that will automatically call up the USNO's atomic clock so that the RO clocks can be set automatically. He has also (finally) obtained a laser printer to produce Signals on.

James reports that he has gotten the old crane operative again, and continues to work with Campanella on the SCR project.

Slack reports that he will be setting up his PC in the focus room today, and will soon be working on the RFI detection and recognition problem.

Schumacher is back to working on the KLT project after a long rest, and brings some graphs of his most recent work. He will reestablish his connection to Magnus and begin posting his KLT work there once again.

The meeting broke at roughly 12:10pm, with most going off to their respective tasks.

Following our return to Dreese 805 after the asbestos removal project, it appeared that the work crew had misplaced boxes which had been read, and ones which had not been read. Today, Steve Brown and I spent some time on various aspects of the card project, in addition to Steve's ongoing testing of computer equipment. Milestones: All 214 boxes previously written to magnetic tape on the IBM MVS system are now recorded on a two volume disk pack file, on the VAX 11/750. The next step for this file will be separation of individual boxes into separate files on the VAX, to be followed by transfer to floppy diskette, so that Dr. Dixon can take the data home to add his comments to the comments section. All original boxes were located in Dreese 817 and 805, and collected in Dreese 817, except for Box 001. Fortunately, Box 001 is safely stored on magnetic media. Unread boxes have all been located and moved into proper sequence, except for Box 528. There is a slight chance this box was not numbered during the manual numbering activity two years ago. During the count, two occurrences of duplicate numbers were found, so omission of a number cannot be ruled out. In any case, loss of only one box is much less than I had been worried we would see. The MicroVAX has apparently suffered some deterioration of the system disk, which is a 60 megabyte drive. The operating system would not permit logins, and an attempt to restore the operating system from magnetic tape resulted in numerous bad verify reports and an unbootable system. Air conditioning is to be connected to Dreese 805 in the near future. If thisis done, it may correct the MicroVAX problem, as well as problems which Steve Brown has observed on the VAX 11/750.

I am working on the preparations for the two upcoming SETI conferences. We will be presenting papers about ARGUS at both. 1. August in Santa Cruz Calif. They want a "brief" abstract by June 30, no format specified. It will be printed in the conference program. I'll send something. 2. October in Austria. This is much larger and more formal conference. They requires a formal abstract, with specified font, type size, paper, margins etc. I struggled and did this last Friday and it is on its way. Must be there by June 30. The abstract will be published in the program. Then they want the full paper (12 or more pages, all in the same very specific format. It was real struggle for me to manually make all that work in the abstract, using the word processor on my NeXT workstation, with no manual. I can't do it for 12 pages. I need significant help, first to write the paper, and then to get it formatted onto the pages. All of the papers will be printed and available for purchase at the conference. We can also buy extra copies for ourselves, printed officially, and we should. Some of the papers will be selected for publication in the later conference proceedings. I am optimistic that ours would be selected, since it is unusual and future-looking. The full paper must be in by July 15, so we have little time. I envision writing up an updated version of what we presented earlier this year at NASA Ames and JPL. We need to correct all criticisms made there, and incorporate new suggestions, such as moving to a lower frequency range. We have many nice illustrations that will be fine for the presentation. They allow overheads (which we have), plus slides, but the slides must be 50x50 mm, the European standard, not our 35mm style, so I think we should forget that option. But all illustrations we use in the printed paper have to be black-and-white, and fit in half a page width, square. So we must convert those. I suspect that photos will not work well as such illustrations, but diagrams will.

Drs. Dixon and Barnhart, Steves: Brown and Janis, and Russ Childers gathered at Dreese 805 for tonight's meeting. The air conditioning is still not connected, but the cooler day made conditions acceptable. Steve Janis reported that workmen were standing on ladders again near the meeting room, earlier in the day. There is still no word on when the long anticipated connection will be made. Steve Brown and Russ Childers reported that Don James has succeeded in restoring the crane to operation. Don replaced a failing mechanical fuel pump with an electric pump. He has exercised all the machinery except for the crawlers. Russ said the engine sounded surprisingly good. Steve Brown has continued to work on software at the focus room. He corrected a bug in operation of the Drift program, and he is developing a program to assist in evaluating the gain of the 50 channel receiver channels. The failing air conditioner was mentioned in an earlier message. All equipment except for a couple of PC's has been powered down. Chris Slack will be arriving for his summer internship on Thursday, and he will be met by Dr. Barnhart. Steve Brown will meet Chris at Otterbein on Friday, and will take him to the observatory for a tour. There was discussion of the possibility that Chris might be willing to work on programming activities on the VAX 11/750 at Dreese Hall, assuming the air conditioner connection is made. Dr. Kraus sent a fax to Dr. Dixon, cautioning that when the parabolic reflector cables are replaced, the adjustment of tension should be done carefully to avoid deforming the surface. There was discussion of a conversation with ElectroScience Lab personnel, suggesting that the parabola may be shifting. Russ has been collecting more data on the "Van Horne" gas cloud. He reported a shift in frequency since previous observations two months ago. Current work on computing doppler shift will be applicable to resolving the changes, but preliminary study indicates more work on the doppler shift program is needed. Dr. Barnhart conducted a tour of Big Ear for a group of Space Campers last Friday. Steve Janis has been looking for references for Dr. Dixon's Argus paper, and working on correspondence. Dr. Dixon mentioned again an idea he is developing for Argus, to observe a number of sources simultaneously, and to gather data about interstellar scintilation. The resulting observations may provide an understanding of the 'structure' of the medium as it changes. Please mark your calendars to attend a presentation on fuzzy logic, tentatively scheduled for the 3rd Saturday of July at the observatory. Chris Slack has done work in this area, and he has expressed interest in giving a talk on the subject for observatory supporters.

I spoke with Tom McDonough last night and he informed me that TPR will have an OSETI article but it will be written by a yet unnamed distinguished scientist. I have just received more info ion the Santa Cruz meeting. I am down to present a paper on SETI. Although the provisional program indicates that the paper's title is the familiar one of "The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) In The Optical Spectrum", other material included states that the paper that has been accepted is the one called "The Columbus Optical SETI Observatory". The committee has agreed to offset my conference expenses by making a $300 contribution to my travel expenses. Is anyone else from OSU presenting at the conference?

Sincerely,
Ingeborg May
(of Warner Cable)

ed. note: I received a letter from Signals reader Amy S. Bouska mentioning that she enjoyed the article on M-15 in the last issue. Thanx for the note Amy! She further mentions that she'd like to see more such articles in Signals. I will try to include articles of general astronomical interest whenever possible. Let's hear from the rest of you! What would you like to see in future issue? Anything we should cut out? Let us know what you think!

VOYAGER 1 and 2: The two Voyager spacecraft are continuing their Interstellar Mission, having remotely detected the heliopause, the boundary between the solar magnetosphere and interstellar space, for the first time last month. Voyager 1, launched September 5, 1977, is currently 7.9 billion kilometers (4.9 billion miles) from the Sun after flying by Jupiter and Saturn in 1979 and 1980; Voyager 2, launched August 20, 1977, to fly by Jupiter (1979), Saturn (1981), Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989), is now 6 billion kilometers (3.8 billion miles) from the Sun.

A Roswell, Ga based firm has proposed to launch into orbit a mile-long, inflatable Mylar platform that will carry a commercial advertisement. The platform is scheduled to fly in 1996 and will rival the full moon in both size and brilliance. The project is being designed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and at the University of Colorado Office of Space Studies at Colorado Springs.

Obviously, such a proposal, if allowed to fly, will add significantly to the light pollution astronomers must struggle with to ply their trade. Many individuals and groups have already voiced their opposition, and the American Astronomical Society has issued a press statement opposing the proposal.

On-going monitoring of this proposal is being handled by Faith Vilas, who can be reached at her office at (713) 483-5056. For more information, contact Faith or, to voice your opinion of the proposal, contact the Lawrence Livermore lab and/or the University of Colorado's Office of Space Studies directly.

ed. note: Information for the above article was taken from the American Astronomy Society's newsletter # 65, June 1993.

Again we approach that time in the year when we must examine the level of feedback and gain in mailing the newsletter to so many people. I suggest you examine your mailing label attached to this newsletter. If it shows no unusual marks or icons you can count on the fact that we treat you as a regular contributor to the Radio Observatory — either as a volunteer or a donor of equipment or money. There are also a few long-time supporters of our efforts that we would not remove from the mailing list, even if they request it. On the other hand, if you find a row of asterisks by your address, thus;
Dr. P. E. Barnhart *
Dept. of Physics/Astronomy *
Otterbein College *
Westerville OH 43081 *
it means we have flagged your file to indicate we have neither heard from you in a long time or have lost track of contributions you may have made. IN ORDER TO CONTINUE RECEIVING SIGNALS ON A REGULAR BASIS ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS WRITE TO US AT THE ABOVE ADDRESS TELLING US YOU ARE STILL INTERESTED AND INTEND TO EXERCISE THAT INTEREST BY MAILING IN A CHECK, GIVING US A GREAT IDEA TO EXPLORE WITH BIG EAR, OR JUST TELL US WHAT GREAT PEOPLE YOU ARE TO DESERVE CONTINUED SERVICE FROM NAAPO. Service will not be terminated abruptly so you can procrastinate for a while. Needless to say, we are always glad to hear from anyone, even those who contribute regularly to our cause.