:INFO
The Wow! Signal
On 15 August 1977 the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University recorded a strong narrowband radio signal that appeared to come from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. A few days later, astronomer Jerry Ehman found the reading on the printout, circled it, and wrote Wow! in the margin. The signal has never been detected again and remains unexplained.


:STATS

:TIMELINE
The discovery
1977-08-15 | Big Ear records the signal automatically while no one is watching.
1977-08-20 | Jerry Ehman reviews the printout, sees the code 6EQUJ5, and writes Wow!
1980-01-01 | Repeated searches of the same sky find nothing.
2010-01-01 | Comets, scintillation and space debris are proposed and set aside.
2024-01-01 | It stands as the most tantalising unexplained signal in the SETI record.

:IMAGE

:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:Jerry Ehman]
I wrote Wow! because it was the most surprising signal I had ever seen.


:POLL
What was the Wow! Signal?
A genuine extraterrestrial transmission
A rare natural radio source
Interference from something near Earth
Keep it open

:LINK
https://www.bigear.org/wow.htm
The Ohio State University Radio Observatory. The Wow! Signal.