Chapter 11
SETI Program at the Medicina INAF
Radioastronomy Station: Past, Present,
Future
Stelio Montebugnoli
Abstract In these last year, new Earth-like type exoplanets have been discovered.
These could be suitable to sustain life and maybe able to evolve in a technological civilization as happened on the earth. SETI program for 40 years is looking to
verify such an existence through observations in both the radio and optical bands.
At the Medicina radio telescope, the SETI program started in the middle of the 90s,
exploiting a high-resolution spectrum analyzer, with many million channels, given
by the University of Berkeley. We observed in a piggyback mode for ten years, in
the period 1998–2008, for 73.000 h of operation. During these observations, we
searched for a “Doppler-shifted” monochromatic radio because we thought that ET
would have sent such a signal to flag his presence into space. Many suspect signals
were received, but no one has been verified in further observation as requested by the
Post Detection International Protocol. From 2008 till now, the SETI program didn’t
continue, but research activities will probably start soon with new post-processing
algorithms implemented on a commercial fast Personal Computer.
11.1 Activities at the Medicina Radiotelescopes
11.1.1 Past
SETI program activities started in 1998 at the Medicina radiotelescopes (see
Fig. 11.1), at that time belonging to the National Research Council (CNR), and from
2005 on to the National Institute of Astrophysics. Up to now, it was supposed that ET
intentionally transmits a monochromatic signal to flag out his presence somewhere
in the Milky Way. Such a monochromatic “footprint” should be easily recognizable
S. Montebugnoli (B)
Associate Senior Engineer Cross Radiotelescope, Medicina, Italia
e-mail: s.montebugnoli@ira.inaf.it
SETI Advisor Scientific Directorate INAF, Rome, Italy
Associate Senior Engineer IRA INAF, Bologna, Italy
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
S. Montebugnoli and A. Melis (eds.), The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence,
Springer Proceedings in Physics 260, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63806-1_11
107
SETI Program at the Medicina INAF
Radioastronomy Station: Past, Present,
Future
Stelio Montebugnoli
Abstract In these last year, new Earth-like type exoplanets have been discovered.
These could be suitable to sustain life and maybe able to evolve in a technological civilization as happened on the earth. SETI program for 40 years is looking to
verify such an existence through observations in both the radio and optical bands.
At the Medicina radio telescope, the SETI program started in the middle of the 90s,
exploiting a high-resolution spectrum analyzer, with many million channels, given
by the University of Berkeley. We observed in a piggyback mode for ten years, in
the period 1998–2008, for 73.000 h of operation. During these observations, we
searched for a “Doppler-shifted” monochromatic radio because we thought that ET
would have sent such a signal to flag his presence into space. Many suspect signals
were received, but no one has been verified in further observation as requested by the
Post Detection International Protocol. From 2008 till now, the SETI program didn’t
continue, but research activities will probably start soon with new post-processing
algorithms implemented on a commercial fast Personal Computer.
11.1 Activities at the Medicina Radiotelescopes
11.1.1 Past
SETI program activities started in 1998 at the Medicina radiotelescopes (see
Fig. 11.1), at that time belonging to the National Research Council (CNR), and from
2005 on to the National Institute of Astrophysics. Up to now, it was supposed that ET
intentionally transmits a monochromatic signal to flag out his presence somewhere
in the Milky Way. Such a monochromatic “footprint” should be easily recognizable
S. Montebugnoli (B)
Associate Senior Engineer Cross Radiotelescope, Medicina, Italia
e-mail: s.montebugnoli@ira.inaf.it
SETI Advisor Scientific Directorate INAF, Rome, Italy
Associate Senior Engineer IRA INAF, Bologna, Italy
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
S. Montebugnoli and A. Melis (eds.), The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence,
Springer Proceedings in Physics 260, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63806-1_11
107