Weak Interstellar Messages Pass us bY

SOME SUGGESTED FREQUENCIES

Since the atmosphere is fairly transparent to 860.2649 Mhz (which is half of 1720.5299 Mhz, the highest emmission frequency of OH, and the top part of the "water hole" ) and the others listed below, we're using an off-of-the-shelf Radio Shack desk-top scanner (which is frequency limited by the FCC/Gov't; we can't get the frequencies listed below in black, without making illegal modifications) to listen to the following candidate frequencies (approximately, because our scanner does'nt have good frequency resolution!) colored in red:

Deuterium (D) or (H² ) , is an isotope of hydrogen with twice its mass. Hydrogen is the most prevalent element in the universe, so I'm listening to frequencies related to Deuterium, even though it isn't in the "waterhole". Before I started this project, I checked some reference sources (including my cousin, a HAM radio operator) who feel that the atmosphere is relatively transparent above 60 Mhz, which was great news to me because I had a misconception that, from Earth, microwave SETI was the best window on the radio universe. Below 60 Mhz atmospheric deflection is problematic and may not be fruitful for a ground based radio SETI (although I'll tune in anyway in case non-deflected signals get through or ETI's find a way around the deflection problem by using near Earth transmissions or some other means.)

Once in awhile I actually do this project (but rarely these days), and I also listen to frequencies within 300 kilohertz (as suggested by Giuseppe Cocconi and Phillip Morrison in their article [Nature, Sept. 19, 1959]) of the frequencies listed above (in red) to compensate for the effect of transmitters and receivers on moving planets in our region of the galaxy (I'm making the obvious assumption that the transmitting planet is not far, in cosmic terms, because of our weak reception capablilities).

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