As a fun project, we analyzed our Arecibo Telescope data using the same methods and format employed by the Big Ear Radio Telescope in 1977. These also helped us better understand the data and develop enhanced yet similar code to explore it.
Figure 1. Original Big Ear Telescope data revealing the Wow! Signal as a the sequence '6EQUJ5' of signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). There are 50 frequency channels, 10 kHz wide, with a temporal resolution of 12 seconds (only 10 seconds are integrated each time). The right image has a graphical representation of the same data, where the signal is more visible in the lower left.
Figure 2. Original Arecibo Telescope data with similar signals due to cold hydrogen clouds. There are 149 frequency channels, 10 kHz wide, with a temporal resolution of one second. This is Method 8 in our analysis.
Figure 3. Same as Figure 2 above, but the data was analyzed using Big Ear's methods (Method 5 in our code). The data was reduced to 50 frequency channels, 10 kHz wide, with a temporal resolution of 12 seconds to mimic the Wow! Signal data. The same structures are visible, some brighter than others.
Figure 4. Finally, our Arecibo Telescope data is converted to the same format as the Wow! Signal. For example, the central signal has the sequence '14556431'. They are much weaker, only reaching SNRs between 3 and 7 (grey boxes) and never getting to letter values. In our study, we propose that these cold hydrogen clouds could temporarily become much brighter, explaining the Wow! Signal.
