Radio Astronomy and Interference

Radio Astronomy and Interference

From the calendar and timekeeping to navigation to satellite communications systems to advanced medical imaging technology, astronomy has brought innumerable benefi ts to civilization. Today, the universe is a laboratory holding undiscovered knowledge that may spawn unimaginable new benefi ts and entirely new industries.
Astronomy is our tool for unlocking that knowledge. To preserve our ability to discover this new knowledge, we must prevent interference that blocks the universe from
our view. For optical astronomers, that means reducing light polution on the night sky. For radio astronomers, it means preventing interference from “dirty” radio transmitters
that spill over into sensitive receiving systems. Using well known and readily available engineering techniques, operators of communication and satellite systems can avoid interfering with radio astronomy. Just as we insist that industrial fi rms use good engineering to avoid polluting the air, water, and soil, we must insist that fi rms operating radio transmitters use good engineering to preserve humanity’s precious window on
the universe. What is Radio Astronomy?
Radio astronomy is the study of distant objects in the universe by collecting and analyzing the radio waves emitted by those objects. Just as optical astronomers make images using the light emitted by celestial obbjects such as stars and galaxies, radio astronomers can make images using the radio waves emitted by such objects, as well as by gas, dust, and very energetic particles in the space between the stars. Radio astronomy
has been a major factor in revolutionizing our discoveries and concepts of the universe and how it works. Radio observations have provided a whole new outlook on
objects we already knew, such as galaxies, while revealing exciting objects such as pulsars and quasars that had been completely unexpected.
From revealing the remnant of the “Big Bang” theory to showing that afterglows of the superenergetic Gamma Ray Bursters, radio observers have provided science with insights unobtainable with other types of telescopes. Of the ten astronomers who have won the
Nobel Prize in Physics, six of them used radio telescopes for the work that won them the Prize. Radio telescopes today are among the most powerful tools available for astronomers studying nearly every type of object known in the universe.