radio and radar astronomy, study of celestial bodies by examination of the radio-frequency energy they emit or reflect. Radio waves penetrate much of the gas and dust in space, as well as the clouds of planetary atmospheres, and pass through Earth’s atmosphere with little distortion. Radio astronomers can therefore obtain a much clearer picture of stars and galaxies than is possible by means of optical observation. The construction of ever larger antenna systems and radio interferometers (see telescope: Radio telescopes) and improved radio receivers and data-processing methods have allowed radio astronomers to study fainter radio sources with increased resolution and image quality.
In 1932 the American physicist Karl Jansky first detected cosmic radio noise from the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy while investigating radio disturbances that interfered with transoceanic telephone service. (The radio source at the centre of the Galaxy is now known as Sagittarius A.) The American amateur radio operator Grote Reber later built the first radio telescope at his home in Wheaton, Ill., and found that the radio radiation came from all along the plane of the Milky Way and from the Sun. For the first time, astronomers could observe objects in a new region of the electromagnetic spectrum outside that of visible light.
During the 1940s and ’50s, Australian and British radio scientists were able to locate a number of discrete sources of celestial radio emission that they associated with old supernovae (Taurus A, identified with the Crab Nebula) and active galaxies (Virgo A and Centaurus A) that later became to be known as radio galaxies.
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In 1951, American physicists Harold Ewen and E.M. Purcell detected 21-cm radiation emitted by cold clouds of interstellar hydrogen atoms. This emission was later used to define the spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy and to determine the rotation of the Galaxy.
In the 1950s, astronomers at Cambridge University published three catalogs of astronomical radio sources. The last of these, the Third Cambridge Catalogue (or 3C), published in 1959, contained some sources, most notably 3C 273, that were identified with faint stars. In 1963 American astronomer Maarten Schmidt observed 3C 273 with an optical telescope and found that it was not a star in the Milky Way Galaxy but a very distant object nearly two billion light-years from Earth. Objects like 3C 273 were called quasi-stellar radio sources, or quasars.
Beginning in the late 1950s, radio studies of the planets revealed the existence of a greenhouse effect on Venus, intense Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Jupiter, powerful radio storms in Jupiter’s atmosphere, and an internal heating source deep within the interiors of Jupiter and Saturn.
Radio telescopes are also used to study interstellar molecular gas clouds. The first molecule detected by radio telescopes was hydroxyl (OH) in 1963. Since then about 150 molecular species have been detected, only a few of which can be observed at optical wavelengths. These include carbon monoxide, ammonia, water, methyl and ethyl alcohol, formaldehyde, and hydrogen cyanide, as well as some heavy organic molecules such as the amino acid glycine.
In 1964, Bell Laboratories scientists Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias detected the faint cosmic microwave background (CMB) signal left over from the original big bang, thought to have occurred 13.8 billion years ago. Subsequent observations of this CMB in the 1990s and 2000s with the Cosmic Background Explorer and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellites have detected fine-scale deviations from the smooth background that correspond to the initial formation of structure in the early universe.
Radio observations of quasars led to the discovery of pulsars (or pulsating radio stars) by British astronomers Jocelyn Bell and Antony Hewish in Cambridge, Eng., in 1967. Pulsars are neutron stars that spin very rapidly, up to nearly 1,000 times per second. Their radio emission is concentrated along a narrow cone, producing a series of pulses corresponding to the rotation of the neutron star, much like the beacon from a rotating lighthouse lamp. In 1974, using the Arecibo Observatory, American astronomers Joseph Taylor and Russell Hulse observed a binary pulsar (two pulsars in orbit around each other) and found that their orbital period was decreasing because of gravitational radiation at exactly the rate predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Using powerful radar systems, it is possible to detect radio signals reflected from nearby astronomical bodies such as the Moon, the nearby planets, some asteroids and comets, and the larger moons of Jupiter. Precise measurements of the time delay between the transmitted and reflected signal and the spectrum of the returned signal are used to precisely measure the distance to solar system objects and to image their surface features with a resolution of a few metres. The first successful detection of radar signals from the Moon occurred in 1946. This was quickly followed by experiments in the United States and the Soviet Union using powerful radar systems built for military and commercial applications. Both radio and radar studies of the Moon revealed the sandlike nature of its surface even before the Apollo landings were made. Radar echoes from Venus have penetrated its dense cloud cover surrounding the surface and have uncovered valleys and enormous mountains on the planet’s surface. The first evidence for the correct rotation periods of Venus and of Mercury also came from radar studies.
