Welcome to The S.E.T.I Research & Community Development Institute Limited web Site. It is our intention to keep you informed on the happenings and ongoing work of the Amateur SETI movement in Australia. We are a non-government, non-profit organisation that has as it's members, some of the brightest minds in the world of science. We exist due to the generous assistance of our sponsors and friends. Some of these organizations and individuals are listed below and we are grateful for their contributions to our cause.

                                          Our Mission 

SETI research group came into existence in 1998 when attending the SETI In the 21st Century conference at the University of Western Sydney, Campbelltown NSW. We were a group of Seti League members attending the conference and in between the various papers being presented, the delegates had the opportunity to mix and enjoy some informal discussions. After returning to Brisbane (QLD Australia) an informal meeting with some of our SetiLeague colleagues occurred and we decided that our group should get fully involved with designing and constructing our own SETI Observatory. After all, the Southern Hemisphere offered the best astronomical viewing opportunities in the world. The task was enormous. We needed land, electrical power, equipment, willing labour, money !!!!! Money???? How and who would be so generous to help us out? Well, as it turned out, many individuals and companies came forward to assist us with all aspects of the design, and construction of a facility that would rival anything done elsewhere in the world. SO, OUR MISSION was to do all of the above on a shoe string budget. Yeah Alright, pull the other leg!!! Seriously, we have done it. Our sponsors and willing labour force have done the seemingly impossible. We now have a block of land (2acres) in Southern Queensland with a 13KW Solar Power Station, 2 large 40 Ft dishes, a 14inch Celestron C-14 Optical Telescope facility with C.C.D. camera, accommodation for caretaker and visitors, equipment buildings and most other things to allow us to start doing what we set out to do, provide a first class Astronomical facility to assist the rural educational community and to provide access to both Radio and Optical telescope facilities that are accessible to the future scientists of Australia. This website aims to keep you informed as to our progress. We hope that you enjoy your visit with us. We will endeavour to make your visits here enjoyable. Many sections of the website get updated. Just cruise around regularly and keep up-to-date with what we are up to. Oh, and please sign our guestbook we value your comments.

Special Web Sites and Features From Our Activities in Boonah

                  News News SITE WEBCAMS are Here Now !!

Broadband ADSL is now installed and working at the Observatory site so we have setup three webcams for you to look at. Our local area network is finished being configured and all is looking good. The new cameras will provide new pictures every 60 seconds of the site in Boonah. Stay tuned. Not only will this monumental event provide cute pix of our activities but it will allow us to easily control the site remotely. A huge development for us. Our fourth and final webcam will be active at night and will be pointed at the sky. This will allow our northern hemisphere visitors to get a look at the southern hemisphere sky almost in real time.

    WEBCAM 1                        WEBCAM 2                     WEBCAM 3

Click any of the above three pictures to get a larger view of the site webcam images at the observatory. The pictures are updated every 60 seconds so re-load often to see interesting things like Kangaroos, kookaburra's and two cute hare's and other local wildlife from around the area. At weekends especially Saturday  you will see us working away at our current project. ENJOY.

                                    Dishes Get A LOGO

One of our members, Henk Mulder is a graphics design guru and he came to the site to do some lovely art on the surface of our dishes. Henk had the Logo cut out to make a template, then he sat in the dish and painted the logo by hand. Looks great doesn't it? Thanks Henk.

                           LOOKING FOR THE WOW SIGNAL

Towards the end of June 2010 I was contacted by an academic from Germany who had a theory about the original detection of the WOW Signal at the Big Ear Radio Observatory in 1977, and why it has never been detected again.

Michael wrote :-

"I would kindly like to ask if you would be interested in participating
in an observation. This would only take a few minutes of observation
time, but help to verify or falsify a theory to re-observe the Wow signal
of 1977.

During the last months, I have compiled a paper on interstellar
lighthouses and applied it to the Wow signal. After discussion with
astro-physicists in Germany, the paper gained quite some interest. Then,
observation time at the Hobart/Tasmania 26m radio telescope has been
offered to test the theory.

The theory postulates that Wow was a beacon signal that would re-occur on
- August 16th 2010, 14:18 UTC
- Frequency: 1420.4588 MHz
- Length: 236 seconds
- Coordinates (Y2000.0): RA 19h23m, DE-26°42' (best guess) or RA 19h30m
DE -27°34’

Hobart/Tasmania Radio Telescope will cover the best guess location.
However, its HPWB is too small to cover both locations at the same time.
If your team has the equipment and time, I would be very thankful if you
could make an observation for the other location. "
 

A Link to his paper is HERE and is reproduced with permission from Michael.

We sent a copy of the paper to Dr H. Paul Shuch, executive director of the SetiLeague who in turn sent a copy to Dr Jerry R Ehman the discoverer of the WOW signal. He commented that "this one has some merit, I won't throw this one away." With these comment in mind we decided to look at doing what we could.

We were not quite ready for an observation run at this time but after carefully considering the request, we decided that maybe we could be ready in a few months. So, we decided to have a go at the detection stated to re-occur at 14:18 UTC 16th August. As luck would have it, the WOW signal location would pass overhead our location slightly north of our observatory about 2 hours before this time, but we decided to have a go anyway. It was a good trial to see what our antennas could perform like. Over the two month period we re-engineered the dish electronics, tilted the dish to point a little north of our location, calibrated all of our test equipment and got to work making the changes that we needed to do. To ensure the best possible result, with maximum signal, we set up under the dish and did our vigil out in the cold. We did get some interesting pulses when the dish transited 36 Ophiuchus but as this is a very active system we did not think anything about it. Just recently we learned of a NOVA happening around this time so this would explain the activity in this area of the sky. Here is an animation of the NOVA flare up caught by Rob from his observatory in Bright, Victoria ,Australia.

Our Equipment line up was simple. 2 x 1420 LNA (RAS) , 2 x Icom r8500 receivers, 2 x notebook computers and a 40ft dish. Software consisted of ECU planetarium program, Radio Skypipe II and Spectrum LAB analyzer program to look at the spectrum using the waterfall setting. We spent over 4 hours running the observation but sadly apart from the Ophiuchus pulses there was nothing out of the ordinary detected. Noel Welstead is pictured below sitting at the console patiently waiting for any sign of the WOW. Deb Skilton provided much support on the night providing refreshments and ensuring that we didn't freeze. It was 4 degrees celsius for most of the time we were outside.

Michael also had some observations done by the University of Tasmania at the same time as ours were being made. There was a nil result from them as well. Here are some plots 1 and  2  from the University of Tasmania's radio telescope run.

                                  Life Among the Stars

The Bio-Astronomy 2002 conference was held in Australia at Hamilton Island 8 ~ 12 July. Some of our members attended and some preliminary snapshots and captions can be found here. The proceedings can be purchased from this link HERE.

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                                         **NEW**   

Could our UNIVERSE be one giant COMPUTER SIMULATION?

Neil Boucher investigates this possibility in his essay titled SIMULATION OF THE UNIVERSE. It asks fundamental questions about our own reality, if there really is one !!!!!

See what NASA'S Hubble sees, with the click of a mouse

Each day, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope collects enough information and images to fill five encyclopaedia's. Now, anyone with access to a computer and the World Wide Web can see the most exciting pictures captured by the world's first space-based optical telescope.

A new web site, "Hubble Space Telescope: New Views of the Universe," highlights the unique contributions to astronomy by this tireless observatory. The exhibition was developed by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Baltimore, MD, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution

To experience the new "Hubble Space Telescope: New Views of the Universe," visit: http://hstexhibit.stsci.edu

The Hubble's official online science web site is located at: http://hubble.stsci.edu

Ground Breaking News

Astrobiology Magazine This site is dedicated to the subject of Astrobiology so you can keep up to date with all the current news on this subject here.

Planet Quest The fifth-brightest star in the night sky may be home to planetary system similar to ours, according to new research by astronomers at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. Computer modeling techniques have shown that the structure of a faint dust disk around Vega can be best explained by a Neptune-like planet orbiting at a similar distance to Neptune in our own solar system and having similar mass.

Panspermia.org Life on Europa or other moons? Scientists say "probably"?

Eso.org The European Southern Observatory is an intergovernmental, European organisation for astronomical research. It has eight member countries. E.S.O. operates astronomical observatories in Chile and has its headquarters in Garching, near Munich, Germany.

Contact Information

• Information and general enquiries info at seti.org.au
• Technical Information tech at seti.org.au
• Web Master nwelstead at seti.org.au
• Or Snail Mail

P.O. Box 1242 Kenmore
Mail Delivery Centre
Brisbane Queensland, Australia 4069

Awards

We are pleased to announce this site was chosen, as winner of the SETI SuperStar Award for the month of May 2000.

Other Awards
	This Site has been awarded the Golden Web Award for excellence in design by the International Association of Web Masters & Designers in 2001/02 & 2003/04.