See also:

Extraterrestrial Life

External Links:

Southern SERENDIP

SETI Australia Centre

21cm Mulitbeam Survey

SERENDIP

Project Phoenix

SETI Institute

Optical SETI

International SETI post-detection committee
 

SETI projects aim to detect signals from advanced civilizations elsewhere in our galaxy. This usually involves searching for radio signals, but other approaches, such as searching for signals in the form of light pulses (optical SETI) are also possible.

The Southern SERENDIP Project is a SETI project using the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales. The SETI project operates in a piggyback mode on the 21cm Multibeam Survey, a radio survey of the southern sky. The SERENDIP instrument can scan 58 million spectral channels simultaneously, in a range of wavelengths around the neutral hydrogen line at 1420MHz. Southern SERENDIP is operated by the SETI Australia Centre at the University of Western Sydney.

Parkes Radio Telescope  ©Australia Telescope National Facility	Multibeam Receiver used for Southern SERENDIP

Southern SERENDIP is one of a number of SETI projects operating around the world. The SERENDIP project of the University of California at Berkeley is a similar piggyback survey using the 1000 foot radio telescope at Arecibo in Pueto Rico. Project Phoenix is a targeted search looking for signals from planets orbiting nearby stars. In 1995 Project Phoenix made observations in the southern hemisphere using the Parkes radio telescope, but is now searching the northern sky using the Green Bank observatory in the USA. It is run by the SETI Institute in California.