We are creating new maps which are comparable to the Ohio Survey maps of 30 years ago. Russ Childers called Bob Dixon and hastily explained the source's characteristics. But, it was visible in more than one channel, and it was unusually powerful. It did not look like a point source, but was rather distributed. Its shape and frequency suggested a cloud composed mainly of hydrogen.
Hydrogen clouds are common in and around the galaxy.
During March and April of 1993, Steve Brown and Russ Childers moved the antenna to the appropriate declination. Steve had written a program for the PDP-11 to collect data for this event. Observations were made with one horn, as the source was so broad that two horns would produce signals from two sections of the cloud at once. Two weeks of observations were made at one declination, to confirm the observing process, and then the antenna was moved every three days, scanning in different declination across the source. After the power of the source dropped considerably with position, the declination was moved well north and the declinations south of that point were scanned.