[Laser] Twinkling Star

[steve kavanagh]

Someone suggested here a while back that an
interesting sensitivity check on a receiver would be
to see if I could hear the "twinkling" of a star.  It
being a nice warm evening last night I gave this a try
and can confirm that it does indeed work.  

I think the star was Arcturus, but in any case was one
of the brightest in the sky, and I was able to make
out a weakish rumbling sound, clearly peaking in the
direction of the star.  This was with a 60mm lens
feeding a surplus CD-player (found smashed on the
sidewalk !) detector with all 6 sections in parallel
and an AC-coupled K3PGP-style preamp.

Neat stuff!  36 light-year dx !

Having done some calculations involving converting
stellar magnitude to watts per square meter, it's
quite encouraging with respect to laser communications
potential too.

Steve VE3SMA

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