DISCOVERY OF CELESTIAL RADIO WAVES
In 1931 a Bell Telephone engineer, Karl Jansky (1905-1950), was trying to find where the interference disrupting transatlantic radiophone circuits came from. He discovered that some of the radio noise was not from the earth; it was extraterrestrial. The primary source was the center of the Milky Way, in the constellation of Sagittarius. In 1936 an Illinois radio engineer, Grote Reber (1911- ), pursued the phenomenon farther. He built the first parabolic radio telescope, 9.5 meters in diameter, and made the first radio map of the sky. The strongest signals he found came from the star clouds in Sagittarius and from several discrete sources toward the center of our Galaxy. The next major discovery was in 1942, by British radar operators and scientists tracking down suspected radar jamming during World War II; they discovered that the interference was radio emission from the sun.
At fjrst astronomers did not grasp just how significant Jansky's work was; they were preoccupied with their observations of the universe through the optical window of the earth's atmosphere. But after World War II radio astronomy came into its own when physicists, radio engineers, and astronomers joined forces to build larger and more efficient radio telescopes. Radio astronomy since then has led to startling discoveries, such as interstellar molecules, pulsars, and the enigmatic quasars. Today our concept of any cosmic body is based upon its appearance all across the electromagnetic spectrum, with the radio region an extremely important component.
In 1931 a Bell Telephone engineer, Karl Jansky (1905-1950), was trying to find where the interference disrupting transatlantic radiophone circuits came from. He discovered that some of the radio noise was not from the earth; it was extraterrestrial. The primary source was the center of the Milky Way, in the constellation of Sagittarius. In 1936 an Illinois radio engineer, Grote Reber (1911- ), pursued the phenomenon farther. He built the first parabolic radio telescope, 9.5 meters in diameter, and made the first radio map of the sky. The strongest signals he found came from the star clouds in Sagittarius and from several discrete sources toward the center of our Galaxy. The next major discovery was in 1942, by British radar operators and scientists tracking down suspected radar jamming during World War II; they discovered that the interference was radio emission from the sun.
At fjrst astronomers did not grasp just how significant Jansky's work was; they were preoccupied with their observations of the universe through the optical window of the earth's atmosphere. But after World War II radio astronomy came into its own when physicists, radio engineers, and astronomers joined forces to build larger and more efficient radio telescopes. Radio astronomy since then has led to startling discoveries, such as interstellar molecules, pulsars, and the enigmatic quasars. Today our concept of any cosmic body is based upon its appearance all across the electromagnetic spectrum, with the radio region an extremely important component.
