Project TARGET is the official title of the present day continuation of the pioneering 21cm microwave SETI program established at the Hay River Radio Observatory by AREA31's Director back in 1985.  It is an acronym standing for Telescope Antenna Researching Galactic Extraterrestrial Transmissions, one that boldly proclaims our firm belief that such signals indeed exist!

History

TARGET was coined in 1989 and became the official trademark name of the SETI program then being conducted on the Hydrogen Line frequency of 1420.4 MHz by Stephens from 1989-1991 at the Algonquin Radio Observatory. The program employed an 18 metre radiotelescope antenna built in the late 1960's by the Department of Astronomy, University of Toronto, located deep in the wilds of Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada, and later donated to Mr. Stephens for this endeavor in 1982.  With the new found availability of liquid Nitrogen (and subsequent improved sensitivity), through association with the National Research Council at ARO, the receiving system was essentially the same as employed previously from 1985-1988 by Stephens at the Hay River Radio Observatory.

Prior to ARO, Stephens converted a decommissioned troposcatter defense communications station in Canada's Western Arctic into the Hay River Radio Observatory.  The 21cm SETI program conducted a limited space domain, intensive time domain search of the restricted space available to the two large but fixed 18 metre dish antennas.  14 degrees of elevation beam steering was accomplished with a clever synchronized moveable feed on track system at the prime focus of each of the antennas.  The Planetary Society generously provided a research grant to the HRRO in 1977.  HRRO was operated under the auspices of the Interstellar Electromagnetics Institute, incorporated the same year the observatory began listening in 1985.

At HRRO and later at ARO, the 21.1 cm wavelength band (1420.4 MHz), was continuously monitored by a 50 channel filterbank spectrometer as well as a sweeping spectrometer covering 5 MHz and 1 MHz of spectrum respectively, for unusual signal content.  The resolution of each of the 50 channels of the filterbank spectrometer was 100 KHz.  The resolution bandwidth of the swept channel of the sweeping spectrometer was 20 KHz. In addition to these narrowband detectors (wide by today's SETI standards), the entire 10 MHz receiver IF passband around the H1 Hydrogen Line was recorded and employed in some sky mapping. The false color image of the galactic plane containing the radio nebula M-17 at the bottom is shown as an example of continuum radio mapping accomplished at ARO during the 3 year course of the program there. 

The 50 channel filterbank spectrometer was generously provided by loan arrangement from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), at Greenbank, West Virginia.  The sensitive GaAs FET amplifier modules used, employing arctic winters for cooling at HRRO and later liquefied Nitrogen at ARO, were provided through the generous assistance of Dr. Jill Tarter , who helped arrange their loan from the Radio Astronomy Lab of  Drs. Tap Lum and David Williams at the University of Southern California at Berkeley.  Dr. Tarter, then with the NASA SETI Program Office is now Chief Scientist of Project Phoenix, the SETI Institute). The assistance of these individuals and agencies is gratefully acknowledged and appreciated!

Look here for photo essays of the telescopes and equipment previously employed at HRRO and ARO.

Present

With the establishing of the AREA31 Radio Observatory in 1999 comes a new opportunity for Project TARGET, thanks in part to nearly a decade of head spinning advancements in low-cost computing power. 

Modern developments in home computers and Digital Signal Processing (DSP), using software driven Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT), can turn a garden variety PC, home satellite dish, and some off the shelf available Ham radio equipment into a very sensitive SETI radiotelescope!  Although the sensitivities are good the total frequency band of the literally billions of potential frequencies that may need to be searched cannot be handled by the home computer approach that employs the computer's sound card to deliver the received radio noise from space into the computer for analysis over just a few kilohertz.  Although this can yield 1500 or more 2 Hz wide channels, and that's a trick impossible just 10 years ago unless you had an affiliation with one of a select few university computer labs in the world, much more simultaneous channels are required.  For systems development at A31RO, the home computer approach is being employed now.  For this we are soliciting the donation of specific computer equipment. For the long haul we have contracted with Stanford University to provide Project TARGET with a 10 million channel SETI spectrometer. This spectrometer is supported by generous gifts from the Planetary Society
and a Canadian SETI supporter who wishes anonymity.

Most SETI searches today concentrate on the so called "waterhole", the 300 MHz wide slice of electromagnetic spectrum located between the frequency at 1420.4 MHz where unexcited atoms of Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, sing like a sea of crickets, and several discrete frequencies near 1700 MHz where Hydroxyl, the other disassociation product of life supporting H2O molecules do a dance producing spectral line emissions of their own out in the tenuous filaments of gas and dust in our galaxy. In the mid 80's to early 90's Project TARGET spent many years listening around 1420.4 MHz. 

Today with smaller dish antennas that have more precise reflective surfaces available as surplus from the
commercial satellite trade comes an exciting opportunity to move up to higher frequencies, and search new electromagnetic "territory".  This is precisely where Project TARGET is now focussed.  More details on the new search strategy are given in the AREA31 Radio Observatory page.  What is significant is that the new strategy enables a 4.5 metre telescope now in operation here at AREA31 to attain nearly the same sensitivity of the 18 metre antenna previously employed at ARO!  A compact array of large Teleport class satellite antennas is proposed, all to be obtained surplus, relocated and installed at AREA31 and linked together to form the functional equivalent of a very large and powerful telescope.  The plan can be fulfilled relatively inexpensively over just a few years with the right corporate and public support.  Other veteran SETI researchers in California and Australia are now proposing somewhat similar schemes with expectations of building such antenna arrays using new hardware. This is Canada's premiere SETI effort, it was 14 years ago and still is today.   Remember our policy of Reclaim, Recycle & Re-use. I do hope you will support it.

Please see our Help Wanted section to learn how you can help.