[evlatests] Circularly polarized reflected lunar emission {External}

[David Schafer]

The band 430MHz - 440MHz is allocated by the ITU for radio amateur operation and I recall this band being fairly popular for Earth-Moon-Earth (Moon Bounce) communication. I do not know about the possibility of these amateur stations being active most or all of the time. This type of communication certainly operates in a bandwidth << 1MHz.

Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: evlatests <evlatests-bounces at listmgr.nrao.edu> On Behalf Of Rick Perley via evlatests
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2023 5:02 PM
To: evlatests at listmgr.nrao.edu
Subject: [evlatests] Circularly polarized reflected lunar emission

Our lunar observations often show reflected terrestrial RFI at certain times and frequencies.

The data taken November 4 shows quite a spectacular example of this. I've looked, on a single ten-minute scan, for reflected circularly polarized emission in the frequency bands:  288 -- 352 MHz, and 384 --
448 MHz.  The channelwidth was 1 MHz.

Three channels showed remarkably strong emission (at about 1 Jy level):

437, 438, and 439 MHz.  No other frequencies showed anything. The typical rms noise is about 20 mJy.

This is not local RFI -- it has to originate 'somewhere on earth'. Although I haven't yet checked every scan, the evidence strongly suggests it is on most of the time.

Does anybody have any ideas?

Rick


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