An astronomer group, which examined the data from Murchison Widefield Array Radio Telescope in Western Australia, has recently faced a great surprise and mystery. Designed to capture radio signals traveling in space for more than 13 billion years, the telescope seemed strangely found a television signal.

This was quite surprising because the telescope was placed by the Australian government in an area of ​​radio silence. This was to prevent similar interactions and initiatives. However, television signals continued for five years. Astronomers also noticed that this signal was moving in the sky.

Source of the Signal: Aircraft

“Suddenly we noticed that the signal is probably reflected from the plane,” said the US research leader Jonathan Potber, a physicist of the University of Brown and Murchison Widefield Array project. Potber said that these signals, which have been observed for five years, are television broadcasts reflected from the aircraft.

Such unwanted data contaminate astronomical data and cause wide problems. You can compare this to a child’s shouting while trying to listen to the person at the other end of the table. When telescopes receive such unwanted signals, it may be difficult to distinguish the data with their main objectives, and a significant portion of the collected data may become unusable.

In the study, the team tried to determine this parasite source and to determine whether it was caused by aircraft. For this purpose, they focused on objects closer to the telescope and used the technique of creating radiation. This technique helped predict the height of nearby objects such as aircraft or satellite.

The team estimated the average height of the object at approximately 11.7 km as a result of their observations. This height corresponds to the range of viewing height of a plane. In addition, when they calculated the speed of the signal, they found that it was 792 km/h, which was consistent with the speed of a plane. The frequency band of the reflected signal was also associated with the Australian digital TV channel Channel 7.

“This is an important step to make human -made intervention from the data from the data,” Jonathan said: “Astronomers can protect their observations and increase their chances of making important discoveries,” he said.

The team now aims to leave behind useful astronomy data by eliminating signals reflected from the aircraft. They also plan to expand this technique to the initiative reflected from the satellites. However, due to the increase in the number of satellites in orbit and attempts to the Earth, astronomers say that we may have to move radio astronomy to a quieter environment like the moon.

The study was published in Australian Astronomy Association Publications…