January 29, 2026: Over the past year, when not in use, the CCERA dish has been parked pointing in a direction corresponding to the meridian crossing of the radio star J0332+5434. This star is the brightest pulsar in the northern hemisphere. It also happens to lie in the galactic plane. The dish’s data acquisition system has been programmed to wake up take data once each day when J0332+5434 passes through the dish’s beam.

In addition to observing signals from the pulsar (we will have more on that in a future post), we have been observing the Doppler shift of one of the 21-cm peaks from the galactic hydrogen. As shown in the graph below, the Doppler shift changes throughout the year as a result of the Earth’s orbital motion about the Sun. We are developing an analysis that uses this information to determine the parameters of the Earth’s orbit. We anticipate being able to determine both the semi-major axis and the eccentricity of the orbit with good accuracy. Results will be available in the coming months.

The graph above shows the Doppler shift of the 21 cm radiation from the same spot in the galaxy as a function of the number of days since Feb. 19 of 2025. The roughly sinusoidal nature of the curve reflects the Earth’s approximately circular orbit around the Sun.