has ANYONE ever tested the wave searching routines by pointing a dish at the moon or our planets and seeing if the routines can find something from EARTH. AND THEN CAN THEY PICK OUT ONE SIGNAL from out planet. seems like a simple test. self generated testing (i.e. setting up a test generation pattern using test equipment COULD BE NON FUNCTIONAL ON ACTUAL SIGNALS! would someone please take 5secs of data from the moon or saturn or mars..... and just see if someones computer could actually find a tv station from earth?????

thanks,
jimP

All the billions of 'signals' found so far:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sci_status.html

... are most probably earth radio noise.

No need to point the dish at moon - in fact it is very hard to NOT receive earth radio noise/contamination (e.g. by near radars).

("point the dish" is not very possible:
- Arecibo dish is fixed in earth crater and only the receiver above it can be moved slightly
- SETI@home do not have the powers/money to "point the dish":
From the above link: "The SETI multibeam data recorder collects data by piggybacking on the Arecibo ALFA receiver."
)

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

All the billions of 'signals' found so far:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sci_status.html

... are most probably earth radio noise.

No need to point the dish at moon - in fact it is very hard to NOT receive earth radio noise/contamination (e.g. by near radars).

("point the dish" is not very possible:
- Arecibo dish is fixed in earth crater and only the receiver above it can be moved slightly
- SETI@home do not have the powers/money to "point the dish":
From the above link: "The SETI multibeam data recorder collects data by piggybacking on the Arecibo ALFA receiver."
)

At least, they don't get to do that very often. They have on very rare occasions spent the money to point the dish when there was a very interesting set of signals from a few places. I believe that the only time they have done this, they spent a half an hour each on 8 points.

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