This redditor is both a ham radio operator, and an actual radio astronomer! Might be willing to answer some of your questions, maybe.
Astronomy
I dunno if you meant to link to a sub instead of a user, but that's what I'm seeing. That sounds awesome! Thanks for sharing!
She's very popular and I would imagine gets lots of messages. I'm not sure if she would prefer to have you message her directly or post on the subreddit. Either way, Andromeda321 is the real deal. Good luck! Be sure to post your pics here, I bet they'll be real cool!
Awesome, thanks! Don't hold your breath, though. Right now, this thing is paying for itself, and it's not much. My first goal is to get a used DSLR so I can take promotional pictures. I know it's a manually slewed scope, but I'm not trying to take crazy multi-hour exposures, I'm trying to show what people might expect to see IRL, and take promotional shots of people on the class. Then, I'll probably look at making the radio telescope rig more seriously, hopefully before summer.
@RemindMe@programming.dev 2 days
I don't have any recommendations, unfortunately. But this is very interesting! I have gotten into software-defined radio recently and radio astronomy seems like a good direction to continue learning. Hopefully someone has some good advice.