SETHI@Berkeley- A Piggyback 21-cm Sky Survey at Arecibo

Abstract

SETI@home observes a 2.5 MHz bandwidth centered on 1420 MHz near the 21-cm line using a short line feed at Arecibo which provides a 6' beam. This feed sits on Carriage House 1. During normal astronomical observations with the new Gregorian dome the feed scans across the sky at twice the sidereal rate. We are using the SETI@home receiver to obtain about 4.4x10^6 HI spectra per year with integration time of 5 seconds per spectrum. We have accumulated 2.6 years of data covering most of the sky observable from Arecibo. This survey has much better angular resolution than previous single dish surveys and better sensitivity than existing or planned interferometric surveys.