16 Facts About Grote Reber

Grote Reber was an American pioneer of radio astronomy, which combined his interests in amateur radio and amateur astronomy.

Grote Reber was instrumental in investigating and extending Karl Jansky's pioneering work and conducted the first sky survey in the radio frequencies.

Grote Reber was an amateur radio operator, and worked for various radio manufacturers in Chicago from 1933 to 1947.

In 1940, he achieved his first professional publication, in the Astrophysical Journal, but Grote Reber refused a research appointment with Yerkes Observatory.

Grote Reber turned his attention to making a radiofrequency sky map, which he completed in 1941 and extended in 1943.

Grote Reber published a considerable body of work during this era, and was the initiator of the "explosion" of radio astronomy in the immediate post-Second World War era.

Grote Reber's data, published as contour maps showing the brightness of the sky in radio wavelengths, revealed the existence of radio sources such as Cygnus A and Cassiopeia A for the first time.

However Grote Reber demonstrated that the reverse was true, and that there was a considerable amount of low-energy radio signal.

Grote Reber sold his telescope to the National Bureau of Standards, and it was erected on a turntable at their field station in Sterling, Virginia.

In 1954, Grote Reber moved to Tasmania, the southernmost state of Australia, where he worked with Bill Ellis at the University of Tasmania.

Grote Reber imported 4x8 douglas fir beams directly from a sawmill in Oregon, and then high technology double glazed window panes, from the US.

Grote Reber was fascinated by mirrors and had at least one in every room.

Grote Reber powered this amplifier, and all his later receivers at Dennistoun, from batteries, to avoid interference entering the equipment along power cables.

Grote Reber was not a believer of the Big Bang theory; he believed that red shift was due to repeated absorption and re-emission or interaction of light and other electromagnetic radiations by low density dark matter, over intergalactic distances, and in 1977 he published an article called "Endless, Boundless, Stable Universe", which outlined his theory.

Grote Reber was supportive of the Tired light explanation for the redshift-distance relationship.

Grote Reber's ashes are located at Bothwell Cemetery, just past New Norfolk in Tasmania and at many major radio observatories around the world:.