About
Contact us by sending an email (forwards to the project mentors).
Why We Created This Project
We believe in the importance of making astronomy accessible to anyone that is interested; that the ability to discover more about our home, the universe, is a right and not a luxury; and that creating collaborative projects with diversity as a priority allows for greater advances in the field of science. The convergence of these ideas come together in the CHART project. Accessibility in our project is defined as affordability and ease in navigation. The CHART project guides novices and hobbyist alike in building their own radio telescope and taking data directly from the skies above at a price around $100. We have chosen every material used in this project carefully to insure low cost to the user and ease in locating that part over time. We have created step-by-step tutorials to build an optimized telescope and set up its hardware, so that the participants feel guided in completion of the project, rather than intimidated and discouraged. All of our code for this project is open source so that anyone can access and modify it for their personal subprojects and collaborative endeavors. Our main mission for this project is to empower participants from anywhere in the world to gain experience in the field of astronomy and increase diversity and participation in STEM.
Meet the Team
Current Students
Alexandra Nelander
Code Development and Hardware Testing
Continued the CHART project during spring and summer 2024. Created new rotation curve plots, tested the install process for the new disc image, and added a data collection memo. Currently working on default setting configurations and Bias-T instructions. Alexandra is an undergraduate student studying Physics and Astrophysics at Arizona State University. Her other projects include modeling radio emissions from high redshift black holes and AGN.
Sara Jones
Project Enhancement
Sara is an undergraduate student at Arizona State studying astrophysics. After gathering her own CHART data, Sara worked on developing several memos regarding both her data and different methods of data collection. Currently, she is researching and developing potential new avenues for CHART.
Carly Fitzgerald
Code Development
Carly is a student at Winona State studying physics. She is currently working on further developing the code in analysis to help it run smoother. She is also exploring how to measure the rotational curve of the outer galaxy. Carly’s future goals involve pursuing a career in engineering.
Mentors
Libby Berkhout
Advisor and mentor
Libby is a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University, and the main contact at McGill for the project.
Danny Jacobs
Advisor and mentor
Danny is an assistant professor at Arizona State University and co-leads the Low-Frequency Cosmology (LoCo) Lab. He is the main contact at ASU.
Adam Beardsley
Project Creator
Main adivisor and creator of the project. Adam is an assistant professor at Winona State University.
Alumni
Ahlea Wright
Code Development & Telescope Design
Ahlea helped continue the CHART project in the summers of 2022 and 2023 and worked on the final design of the telescope. She graduated from WSU with a degree in Computer Science and Bioinformatics. Ahlea’s goal is to use technology to help others in the medical field.
Lindsey Arndt
Code Developement
Lindsey continued the CHART project during Summer 2022. She updated the website, tutorials, and created the GUI and database for taking and storing data. Lindsey graduated with a degree in Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Data science from Winona State University. Her future goals are to be a Software Engineer or User Experience Designer making technology more accessible.
Dylan Gappa
Simulation
Dylan used existing professional surveys to create a simulator for CHART so users could create a mock data set to match when and where they observed. Dylan graduated from WSU with a degree in Physics. Dylan’s career goals involve the civilian service of the military, working on aerospace technology.
Nahom Namera
Bandpass Filter Design
Nahom explored many options for the bandpass filter used by CHART, balancing cost, availability, and performance. He graduated from WSU with a degree in General Engineering with a concentration in Electronics.
Bryanna Gutierrez-Coatney
Project Manager
Bryanna oversaw the project during Summer 2019. She created the website, tutorials, and helped with telescope design. She graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in Astrophysics. Her future goals are to be an educator in STEM and to create educational platforms that allow science and astronomy access to the general public.
Raven Braithwaite
Telescope Design
Raven helped design the radio telescope along with characterizing the hardware. She graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State. Her future goals involve designing and building electronics that will operate on spacecraft such as rockets, satellites, rovers or other robotics.
Edgar Escalante
Code Development & Telescope Design
Edgar helped develop the code to retrieve and read data from the radio telescope during 2018 & 2019. He helped in research and development for the project’s hardware. Edgar graduated from Arizona State with a degree in Physics. His future goals involve using his programming and signal processing experience to advance the field of astronomy.
Belany Zhang
Code Development & Telescope Design
As a McClintock High School student, Belany helped develop the code to retrieve data from the radio telescope, created first draft of the website, and also wrote some tutorials for setting up the software for the project in 2018. She went on to the University of Michigan to study engineering. Her future goals involve pursuing a career in the Artifical Intelligence or Cyber Security field of Computer Science.
Emilie Berthiaume
Code Development & Telescope Design
Emilie helped start the CHART project in the summer of 2018 and worked on the initial programming and design of the telescope. Emilie is an undergraduate student studying mathematics and film at Arizona State University. Her future goals are to use media to increase public interest in science and math.
Support
This project has been supported through a number of research and educational grants.
- Winona State University internal and Foundation grants.
- National Science Foundation CAREER award AST-2337492
- An award from the Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation
- National Science Foundation ATI award AST-2108348
- National Science Foundation Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-1701440.