The Small Radio Telescope (SRT) was developed by Haystack Observatory to serve as an educational tool for universities and colleges for teaching astronomy and radio technology.

The original SRT was popular, with several hundred being built and is still in use at many colleges. It is no longer available new, however, and advances in electronics have rendered the original obsolete. Development of a new SRT was undertaken by Haystack in 2012.

Small Radio Telescope (SRT)

The primary philosophy of the latest design for the SRT is that the users should build the telescope themselves from commercially available equipment, based on plans, instructions, and software provided by Haystack. It is designed to be assembled easily with minimal need for special tools or skills. This approach provides an educational opportunity to the users who build the telescope. Also, users of the SRT will be more familiar with how it works if they assemble it themselves, allowing better in-house technical assistance.

The SRT is no longer available as a kit from Cassi Corp. If you decide to build an SRT, we recommend using the TV dongle version of the New SRT using parts list given at the bottom of this page.

The SRT wiki site

SRT Assembly Information

SRT Software

We provide software, similar in appearance to the original SRT software but written in C instead of Java and running under Linux instead of Windows. Source code is available here:

SRT Reports

Final Report 2013 by Marc Higginson-Rollins and Alan Rogers (pdf) (We recommend building your SRT using a TV dongle for new SRTs as described in this report.)

Block diagram and parts list for SRT using TV dongle

Final Report 2012 by Dustin Johnson and Alan Rogers (pdf)