A Spanish radio amateur recorded an incredible phenomenon.
Spanish radio amateur Diego Villar constantly listens to the sky with a powerful antenna and a good receiver. On Saturday night, earthlings observed a lunar eclipse. Diego's equipment was on, recording was automatic. Imagine the surprise of the amateur when the next morning he saw that on the record there was a powerful radio burst just at the time when the Moon plunged into the shadow of the Earth. It seemed incredible, as if someone from the moon was sending a distress signal or trying to contact us. Diego immediately made a post on social media.
Diego's antennas are tuned to 20.1 megahertz. It is in this range that professionals and amateurs listen to Jupiter, where radio bursts periodically come from. The reason for the bursts is not completely clear, but it is clear that they are somehow connected with Jupiter's moon Io. Io flies through the giant planet's magnetosphere and together with it forms a giant natural radio transmitter. But it's not that simple. It would seem that earthlings should hear a signal every time Io is in a point of its orbit suitable for observation. But in reality, the outbursts are difficult to predict. That is why they are being watched. NASA a long time ago developed a generic receiver and antenna layout for hobbyists to connect to data collection and theirs. This is the kind of equipment that Diego uses.
Diego immediately realized that the signal came from space. This is evidenced by the frequency shift - it is formed due to the movement of the Earth in its orbit. This displacement accurately separates extraterrestrial signals from our usual interference. The signal started at 20 o'clock local time (at 22 o'clock Moscow time) - at that moment the Moon was in the maximum phase of the eclipse. The radiation quickly reached a peak and remained there. At about 23:00 Moscow time, another sharp and very short additional surge occurred. And at midnight the signal was cut off - it was at that moment that the Moon left the earth's shadow.
We contacted Diego as he did not make any hypotheses in the post. As can be understood from Diego's answer, he is sure that the signal came from Jupiter, and it just coincided with the eclipse in time. But something raises doubts about this interpretation.
First, the signal was very long. Usually, bursts from Jupiter last several tens of minutes, because the "beam" coming from Io turns away from the Earth. Second, the signal from Jupiter is not flat. It resembles (if you listen to it with your ears), as if the waves roll onto a pebble beach. It is on this basis that beginners are taught to distinguish Jupiter signals. And finally, the most important thing. At the time of the appearance, Jupiter was below the horizon! This is easy to see if you reproduce the situation in the sky at the time of the eclipse using any computer planetarium. But even if Jupiter could be seen … It is too close to the Sun now. Professionals know that in such a position the Sun completely clogs up the signals from Jupiter with its radiation.
The nature of the phenomenon is still completely incomprehensible. We checked as much as possible to see if we had ever picked up signals of this kind from the moon - no one ever. Unfortunately, equipment such as Diego's does not accurately determine where the signal came from. There are no known mechanisms for generating such a signal. The moon actually emits radio waves because it is hot. But the wavelength of such waves is completely different, and they are very weak. Moreover, during an eclipse, when the Moon has cooled down a little, the radiation should weaken. And everything is actually the opposite.
If you do not think about "saucers" and aliens, it remains to think that someone from Earth specially irradiated the Moon during an eclipse, and Diego got a reflection. But emitting at such frequencies is an overwhelming task for an amateur. Some amateurs in fact emit signals towards the Moon in order to catch the reflection, but the signals are short, and the frequency is different, such that not very much energy is required for radiation. Irradiating the moon at 20 megahertz is a pleasure available to large organizations, but no one reported such experiments.
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EVGENY ARSYUKHIN