“First Light” on LRO-H2 (150cm Parabolic Solar Cooker Radio Telescope at Lichfield Radio Observatory) with two orthogonal monopoles in the cantenna prime focus waveguide 27/9/2025 @ 10:35 BST (UTC+1)

At last! Go this 2^nd monopole installed on the cantenna at 90 degrees to first – so now I can collect vertically and horizontally polarised 1420 MHz data – given that the Milky Way does not have preferred polarisation direction, I am hoping to combine the data to improve SNR.

Interestingly, the slope of the data plots is in a different direction! Not sure if that means I need to adjust the data before putting it into ezRA’s ezCon – what do you think Ted? Plus, Ted, do I need to find way to average data from both monopoles together before using ezCon or will the software happily combine data from both monopoles for me?

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Andy

https://www.astronomy.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/LRO-H2SCRTMonopoles-12-data-collection-screenshots-270925-scaled.png