The Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope (GAVRT) Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI)

Abstract

This paper reports the results from a student-led Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), also known as technosignatures, targeting the plane of the Milky Way as a part of the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope (GAVRT) collaboration between the Lewis Center for Educational Research (LCER) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Students associated with LCER submit analytic reports of spectral data targeting specific regions of the Milky Way, identifying interference, noise, and Candidate signals potentially originating from intelligent sources. GAVRT-SETI's search is guided by the assumption that a narrow-band radio signal (<1.5 Hz) from a fixed location in the sky, occurring across multiple observation periods, is unlikely to be caused by instrument noise or by a natural source. Thus, we searched the reported data for similar signals occurring during different observation periods within the same region of sky. No such signals were found. However, our analysis of the frequency distribution of Candidates suggests that at least a few percent of the Candidates are associated with low-level radio-frequency interference.