Studies of Radio Frequency Interference at Parkes Observatory

Abstract

AbstractFrom February through early June, 1995, Project Phoenix conducted SETI observations of 209 stars over the frequency range from 1195 to 3005 MHz. A byproduct of this search is a unique data set suitable for studying the Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) environment at the Parkes 64-m telescope in New South Wales, Australia. RFI is an increasing problem for SETI and other radio astronomy observations conducted outside of the «protected» frequency bands. The data analyzed for this paper were «mean baseline» spectra in Left and Right Circular Polarization (LCP, RCP), integrated for either 138 or 276 s, covering a 10 MHz bandwidth with 15,552 channels at a resolution of 643 Hz. Channels were identified as contaminated by RFI when the power in the channel exceeded the mean noise by 3%. The «spectral occupancy», the fraction of time RFI was seen, was determined for each channel. The RFI occupancy for LCP and RCP are distinctly different. Approximately 100 MHz of the spectrum was too heavily contaminated for SETI observations.