SERENDIP

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SERENDIP (Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations) is a Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program originated at the University of California, Berkeley.^[1]

SERENDIP takes advantage of ongoing "mainstream" radio telescope observations as a "piggy-back" or "commensal" program. Rather than having its own observation program, SERENDIP analyzes deep space radio telescope data that it obtains while other astronomers are using the telescope.

1 Background
2 Projects
3 See also
4 References and notes

[edit] Background

The initial SERENDIP instrument was an 100 channel analog radio spectrometer covering 100 kHz of bandwidth. Subsequent instruments have been significantly more capable, with the number of channels doubling roughly every year. These instruments have been deployed at a large number of telescopes including the NRAO 90m telescope at Greenbank and the Arecibo 305m telescope. SERENDIP observations have been conducted at 400 MHz to 5 GHz frequencies, with most of the time spent near the 1.42 GHz (21 cm) neutral hydrogen and 1.66 GHz hydroxyl transitions.

[edit] Projects

The most recently deployed SERENDIP spectrometer, SERENDIP IV, consists of a 168 million channel spectrometer covering 100 MHz of bandwidth in the spectral range between 1.37 GHz and 1.47 GHz. It has been installed and operating nearly continuously at the Arecibo telescope since 1999. The SERENDIP IV spectrometer design is also used in the Southern SERENDIP spectrometer at the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia, and by SETI Italia at the 35 meter Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) telescope in Medicina, Italy.