The Wow! source radio emission entered the receiver of the Big Ear radio telescope at about 11:16 p.m. Eastern Daylight Savings Time on August 15, 1977 from what is thought to be outside of our solar system. Ironically, the telescope’s staff had been decommissioned and had to find other employment in the early 1970s. They still had a strong desire to keep tabs on the telescope and continue doing work with it. The systematic search for narrowband signals seemed to be the best way to use that unique radio telescope.
The Big Ear was well designed for a systematic sky survey, as was clearly demonstrated by the success of the Ohio Sky Survey. Also, the combined observing time of all other narrowband observing programs up to that time was very small. Use of the Big Ear would quickly result in them achieving the record for the longest continuously-running survey of narrowband radio emission.
