What's New With Project BAMBI

                             
                             Observation Report 
                    for the SARA Jupiter Comet Watch Program
                 from the Project BAMBI Amateur Radio Telecope
                                at 4.213 GHz
                 ==============================================
                                rev. 9/21/94


By Bob Lash and Mike Fremont
Project BAMBI
Internet: boblash@fununiv.com
          mfremont@fununiv.com


A pair of radio bursts were detected at 1:19:28 UT and 1:23:55 UT on 7/20/94
corresponding with the transit of Jupiter through the main beam of the
BAMBI Radio Telescope. This also correlated with the massive fragment L
impact site which was at the central meridian of Jupiter at the observed
burst times (and was beginning its first rotation around Jupiter).


The power level of each burst was estimated based on calibration runs done
on CASS A, TAU A, and VIRGO A and a best fit square law detection curve.
The results are summarized below:

Designation  Center Time UT     RA        Burst Duration   Jy (Est.) at 4 GHz
-----------  --------------  ---------    --------------   ------------------
Burst B1        1:19:28      14:06:11     4 - 5 minutes          355 Jy
Burst B2        1:23:55      14:10:39     4 - 5 minutes          274 Jy


Jupiter was at RA 14:11:00 and DEC -12 04.

The half power beamwidth transit time for drift scans at this declination
(-12 04 DEC) and beamwidth (1.9 degrees for our 8.5 ft dish) is 7.8 minutes,
so the majority of Jupiter's received power would be predicted to be from
14:11:00 - 3.9 minutes to 14:11:00 + 3.9 minutes, or in other words from RA
14:07:00 to 14:15:00. There is also a +- 30 second error in data logging
resolution. Therefore both bursts fit the beam pattern expected for a Jupiter

transit.

The recording (see Fig. 1 above)
on this day shows the usual radio telescope baseline variation,
but the two spikes near 14:11:00 are considerably "sharper" in shape, strong,
and suggestive of a transient burst rather than the bell shaped pattern
seen when a steady radio source (e.g. SNR) transits the beam.

(Note: Prior to the SL9 impact, 10 nights of Jupiter scans were averaged

to precisely fix the RA calibration. The actual RA is dervived from the
coarse RA in the data log file plus the above RA correction of 5 minutes.
All RA's mentioned are actual).

While observations from one radio telescope cannot prove that the measured
radio bursts were caused by the Fragment L site, there is certainly a
correlation. It is interesting to note that Jupiter was only in the 
telescope beam for 7.8 minutes out of every 24 hour period, and the largest

fresh impact that could have been seen, due to impact timing, was in fact
fragment L. No such bursts were seen on any other night during the encounter.
Correlation with the next most recent fragments seems unlikely since at the 
time of the bursts Fragment K was already on its 2nd rotation and almost 
out of view on the limb, and Fragment H was 4 rotations old and behind 
Jupiter at that time.

We would also like to report that a bell-shaped enhancement that matched

the beam pattern occured precisely as Jupiter crossed the beam at 1:27:00
UT on 7/19/94 (see fig. 2 below): 

There were no fresh impact sites in the beam at that time, and no radio 
bursts were found. We would be very interested to hear from anyone 
who have any theories about this one! We did not find bell-shaped 
enhancements on any other night.

It is our hope that this data may help others confirm their own findings.

If you are aware of confirming data, please let us know!