[Previous] | [Session 75] | [Next]
P.R. Backus (SETI Institute), Project Phoenix Team
Project Phoenix, the privately funded continuation of NASA's Targeted Search SETI Program, has taken advantage of the wide frequency coverage made possible by the upgraded Arecibo Telescope. Our goal is to search for evidence of narrowband extraterrestrial radio signals from nearby stars in the microwave portion of the spectrum. The signal detection system processes a 20 MHz bandwidth with 28.74 million 1 Hz wide channels in each of two circular polarizations. The system is sensitive to signals that are continuously present, or pulsed regularly, even if their frequencies drift by up to about 1 Hz per second. A database of terrestrial signals found in the previous week is used to match against detections for each observation. Candidate signals, i.e., those not in the database, are checked immediately with a "pseudo-interferometric" observation between Arecibo and the 76 meter Lovell Telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory.
Since 1998 October, we have conducted approximately 8 weeks of observations at L-Band, 1200 to 1750 MHz. Approximately 150 MHz of that range is too heavily occupied by terrestrial signals for effective observing. This paper will describe the results of the observations and the terrestrial signal environment in this frequency range.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://www.seti.org/science/ph-bg.html. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: pbackus@seti.org