Foundations of Amateur Radio Astronomy
I have been interested in astronomy for many years. As time passed, my original interest in optical astronomy blended with my career as an electrical engineer and I morphed into that strange type of being known as the amateur radio astronomer.
Over time, I have accumulated data, equipment, photographs, illustrations, technical papers, tables, graphs and a library relating to radio astronomy simply for my own general information and reference. I established a simplistic reference system for the varied topics of interest so that I could readily access material.
At some point, I realized that if I combined, collated, and cross-referenced the numerous notes into a single document I might have a convenient reference source of use to others. As this occurred, the information took the form of lecture notes and, finally, this document. The amount of information available on radio astronomy is both broad and specific, technical and non-technical, old and new, and is spread over a bewildering variety of printed and internet sources.
This book is my attempt to collect, consolidate and correlate general information relevant to amateur radio astronomy. I hope that it is a helpful resource to a wide range of readers.
John G. GuntharpKC5RKW
San Antonio, TexasJune 2016