How is a radio signal turned into an image?

[Matt Jacques]

Im not talking about TVs, but radio astronomy. We receive signals from say a distant star and turn it into a picture, but how?

[KingNothing]

Well..I'm not sure what kind of picture you are talking about. Sometimes it's just light waves that are normally invisible that are moved up or down the spectrum so that they are visible...sometimes I'm sure they jsut graph activity of a galaxy...It also could be a case where the information on light waves (I say light waves because not all waves are in the radio spectrum) is compared to the patterns of light waves coming from stars we can see, and produce an image based on the likenesses and differences.

Ultimately, I'm not sure what kind of picture you are talking about.