Characteristics and Identification of an Unknown HI emission
When an electron transitions between energy levels in a neutral hydrogen atom, it emits radiation with a wavelength of 21 cm that can be detected with a radio telescope. However, a big problem for astronomers, especially amateur astronomers, is accurately identifying what the source of a detected signal is - there are many undesirable factors such as noise and interference. The goal of this research was to determine the unknown source of a detected 21 cm neutral hydrogen emission at about 85°, 40° right ascension and declination. To do this, a homemade horn radio telescope was used to conduct observations, and software that performed fast fourier transform. The observations were conducted over a span of three days, with the same two major hydrogen detection peaks found each day. The radio telescope was confirmed to be accurate and reliable by the replicable and good results. The Leiden/Argentine/Bonn(LAB) HI survey was employed with the stronger HI source to calibrate the radio telescope. Characteristics of the source including right ascension and declination, brightness temperature, and V_lsr were calculated and queries made in the astronomical database SIMBAD. These characteristics were compared against the 20 resulting objects that matched the initial criteria. Ultimately, only two objects passed the criteria: FVW 173.0+0.0 and FVW 173.0+3.0. Thus, a reasonable conclusion was drawn that the source of the weak hydrogen signal detected at (85°, 40°) was a combination of FVW 173.0+0.0 and FVW 173.0+3.0.