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Breakthrough Listen and UC Berkeley SETI Research Center Announce Open Format Data Release

Breakthrough Listen and UC Berkeley SETI Research Center Announce Open Format Data Release

open data

Researchers at the UC Berkeley SETI Research Center and Breakthrough Listen, in collaboration with DeepSig, a company that uses AI to learn models from data, have released data  from observations on the Green Bank Telescope in an open-source format called SigMF. Additionally, the SETI Institute has released data in SigMF format from some of their observations with the Allen Telescope Array (ATA). It’s expected that more SigMF data will be made available from both telescopes in the near future.

Nathan West of DeepSig announced the availability of the data at FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) in Brussels on Sunday.

“We're hopeful that releasing raw data in this open format will encourage more collaboration between SETI researchers and experts in the tech and RF industries,” said Steve Croft, astronomer working with the Berkeley SETI Research Center and also supporting work at the ATA.  He continued to note “that we'll be able to work together on algorithms to identify a wide range of signals both in our data, and in similar data from other sources, in search of that elusive signal from a technological civilization beyond Earth.”

Read more about this data release here. You can access SigMF format raw voltage data from Breakthrough Listen observations of the Voyager spacecraft with the Green Bank Telescope here (one data file per polarization, with associated SigMF headers). SigMF files from ATA observations of several other objects, including Voyager, are here.

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