Operating GBO's 20m Radio Telescope with Ham Radio Students

As a part of the 40-week Exploring the Electromagnetic Spectrum - Ham Radio program with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, students gain technical knowledge of the EMS and experience with hands-on applications through Amateur (Ham) Radio. One of the topics covered in this program is radio astronomy, and students had the opportunity to visit the affiliated Green Bank Observatory (GBO). Students learned how to operate the GBO 20-meter radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia using the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network. Students were trained to remotely operate the radio telescope, where they learned the parameters used for different types of observations and how to read the observational data acquired. In this presentation, we discuss the process by which students learned the parameters to operate the 20-meter telescope by observing and completing a comparative analysis of known pulsars.