Date of Award

6-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2023.

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Kurt Schab

Abstract

The Santa Clara Radio Astronomy Program (SCRAP II) is the continuation of the previous year’s radio astronomy project. Building off of last year’s proof-of-concept, the goal of this project is to design and build a parabolic radio telescope that will boast improved antenna performance, more efficient data acquisition, and cleaner post-processing. These improvements in design strive toward a larger goal of enabling the students of Santa Clara University to explore the depths of our universe from Earth. In this paper, we improve upon a horn antenna design that was used in the previous year with a parabolic antenna. This, combined with additional data storage and post-processing algorithms, will allow us to see celestial objects and determine whether the object is moving closer or further away from Earth. This grants our community the ability to capture and analyze radio signals from the galaxy, which opens new doors to research opportunities in the realm of astrophysics.

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