This page is dedicated to the advancement of amateur radio interferometry-related projects.
This site has now been extensively updated (as of May, 2015) to provide new information about the evolution of my efforts to perform low frequency, wide band interferometry using software defined radios.
Many good resources on low frequency interferometry exist on the internet, including some good, existing amateur efforts. As far as I know, these efforts have been restricted to narrow bandwidths and short baselines.
My effort seeks to leverage the power of software defined radios to do interferometry (and retain the possibility to do VLBI) to achieve greater capabilities than have been previously realized at the amateur level.
Low frequency interferometry is an emerging field of study and the focus of professional efforts including the LOFAR, LWA and PAPER projects. Ultimately, these multi-element arrays will guide the development of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), which should be a truly revolutionary radio telescope.
Here, I will discuss my approach to this concept using materials available at the amateur level. I look forward to comments and suggestions on how to bring this effort to fruition.
This project should also be of considerable use to amateur radio operators for non-astronomy related uses as well such as for passive radar and radio direction finding.
Data handling and software related solutions are described in detail here, largely making use of tools used by the professional radio astronomy community. I primarily use Python and packages written for Python to process data.
Significant investments (for an amateur) in terms of software defined radios and computers is needed to achieve much of what is described here. While not cheap, it could be compared to the costs for assembling an EME station or a functional optical astronomy setup.