As a kid, when we visited the planetarium in Stuttgart, I always was amazed about the monitor in the waiting area where they displayed the current weather satellite images they were able to receive. The setup really was impressive, with a special antenna outside of the planetarium and lots of hardware receivers and amplifiers that decoded the MeteoSAT signals. While it was impressive, it always was clear that all the hardware required was simply too expensive for a student to buy and install. Since then, I almost forgot about the fascination of receiving satellite signals with my own groundstation.
Read more: SatNOGS update
While summer and fall really were amazing times for taking pictures during clear nights, in winter there was permanent cloud coverage and I didn't even have a chance to take a look at the Comet 46P/Wirtanen. Time to make my backup plans happen: I am going radio astronomy.
Read more: Rainy weeks - Satnogs here we go!
Ever since I had my observatory built, I always was worried to misplace or even lose the remote control of my Baader-Planetarium dome. So now it was time for another little hack.
Read more: A little hack
About one year and a half ago, I heard of radio astronomy for hobbyists for the first time. Using a Yagi antenna you can hunt meteors by listening to echoes of radar beams. For Europe, a great radar source is the Graves radar located near Lyon in France.
Read more: Radio Gaga - aka Meteor Scatter
