The Final Frontier Jill Tartar is a radio astronomer for the SETI Institute.
Radio astronomy uses extremely sensitive radio telescopes as tools for data gathering.
Unlike visible-light gathering telescopes, a person cannot look through a radio telescope and see anything. Computers are used to interpret the vast amounts of data gathered by radio telescopes. Visit SETI's home page on the world wide web. There is lots of information about Project phoenix and other SETI projects. You can also learn a lot about radio frequencies by building a radio from scratch.