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Ham radio operators receive signals from Voyager 1 on Dwingeloo telescope

We have used the historic Dwingeloo radio telescope to receive signals from the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Only a few telescopes in the world have received these signals, which are very faint due to the distance of Voyager 1: almost 25 billion kilometers, more than four times the distance to Pluto.

Since the Dwingeloo telescope was designed for observing at lower frequencies than the 8.4GHz telemetry transmitted by Voyager 1, a new antenna had to be mounted. At these higher frequencies, the mesh of the dish is less reflective, making it extra challenging to receive faint signals. These dishes, located around the globe in Goldstone, Canberra and Madrid, are optimized for these higher frequencies and have a diameter of 70m, much larger than the 25m Dwingeloo Telescope.

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