Grote Reber Medal Awarded to Russian Astronomer

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Astronomy and Space articles by Martin George of the Launceston Planetarium 31 December 2011 Grote Reber Medal Awarded to Russian Astronomer The Grote Reber Foundation, through its Selection Committee, recently announced the winner of the 2012 Grote Reber Medal for Radio Astronomy. It will be awarded during 2012 to Professor Nikolay Kardashev, of the Astro Space Centre in Moscow. The medal is awarded for significant and innovative contributions to radio astronomy, and 2012 will be the first year in the history of the Medal that it will be awarded to a Russian astronomer.

Prof Nikolay Kardashev, winner of the 2012 Grote Reber Medal. PHOTO: RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Kardashev has contributed to radio astronomy for more than fifty years. An early achievement, in 1958, was to show that highly energised atoms can give rise to radio emissions at particular frequencies in the centimetrewavelength band. Subsequently, researchers in Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) were able to detect the emissions. He is also well known for his pioneering work on "super civilisations", which has become the basis for observational SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) programs over the past half century. Kardashev described how civilisations might progress to first harness the power from their planet, then their sun and eventually their galaxy to power radio transmitters for interstellar communications. One project that has recently come to fruition has been a very significant radio telescope. More than thirty years ago, Kardashev proposed having a radio telescope in space. In combination with one or more radio telescopes on Earth, this would form a system called an interferometer. By combining signals from two or more radio telescopes, astronomers obtain much sharper 'radio pictures' of objects. The greater the spacing between the instruments, the more advantage is obtained.

As a result, the RadioAstron mission was launched in July 2011 and is in an orbit that takes it up to 350,000 kilometres from Earth. The interferometer system will break records for the detail, or 'resolution', seen in astronomical objects. It is fitting that the RadioAstron spacecraft carries a plaque provided by the Grote Reber Foundation in memory of Reber, who would have celebrated his hundredth birthday on 22 December 2011.

Grote Reber at Bothwell in 1995. PHOTO: MARTIN GEORGE

Reber (1911-2002) was the world's first radio astronomer. In 1937, he built the world's first radio telescope, in the form of a familiar 'dish' on a vacant lot next to his home near Chicago. Using that instrument, Reber made the firstever radio map of the sky, showing the directions from which natural radio emissions were arriving. Although he made several trips back to the USA, Reber spent the second half of his life in Tasmania, first arriving here in 1954. After some initial work near Hobart, he set up antennas across a valley near Kempton. Then, in the early 1960s, he constructed a huge antenna array north of Bothwell to study the sky at the very long radio wavelength of 144 metres. The antennas were attached to poles, and the whole array covered a square kilometre. Reber followed many other scientific pursuits. The house he built in Bothwell won an energy-efficiency award, and he constructed an electric car called Pixie. Article by Martin George, Launceston Planetarium, QVMAG. Reproduced with permission of the Sunday Tasmanian newspaper