Open Source Radio Telescopes: Astronomy Projects for Students, Teachers, and Amateurs

The Open Source Radio Telescopes (OSRT) project is a budding endeavour to provide educational activities for primary and secondary school students and introduce them to science and technology through basic radio astronomy projects, as well as provide a repository for like-minded projects. There are two projects currently on the website: a horn antenna specialized for detecting the 21cm neutral hydrogen line of the Milky Way galaxy, and a loop antenna built to detect Sudden Ionospheric Disturbances (SID's) caused by solar flares and high-energy phenomena in the upper atmosphere. The OSRT website has instructions for building and operating both antennas (http://opensourceradiotelescopes.org/). GNU Radio software is used to interpret and display the data for each antenna, and both are successful at either mapping the Milky Way galaxy across the sky or detecting ionospheric disturbances, respectively. Both projects are well-suited for lab classes or workshop activities and aim to foster an interest in STEM among students.