→ 15 Feb 12 at 12 am
cwnl:
The Wow! Signal in The Tau Sagittarii Star
There was a signal received in 1977 at Ohio state university, caught with The Big Ear Radio Telescope. The signal came from the Saggittarius constellation near the Tau Sagittarii star. The signal begged much attention because it matched the expected signature of an interstellar signal in the antenna used, ” Ehman circled the signal on the computer printout and wrote the comment “Wow!” on its side. This comment became the name of the signal.”
Something interesting I thought I should add on to this which I found out only today during an Astronomy lecture in the American Museum of Natural History, and I thought it would make a cool addition to this already interesting bit. Turns out not only is The region of the sky that lies in the constellation Sagittarius, roughly 2.5 degrees south of the fifth-magnitude star group Chi Sagittarii. Tau Sagittarii is the closest easily visible star. But the Tau Sagittarii is a star similar to our own sun in that in shines a yellow wavelength meaning it’s a medium sized star with similar properties to our own. Figured once you have a signal like that, coming from a star much like our own, you kind of have an interesting astronomical phenomena at hand. Or I could just be speculating.

