URAN

Ukrainian Radio Interferometer of NASU
	Antenna array of the URAN-2 low-frequency radio telescope.
Alternative names	URAN
Organization	Institute of Radio Astronomy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine ;
Location	Ukraine
Coordinates	49°38′17″N 36°56′10″E / 49.6381°N 36.9361°E
Telescopes	Ukrainian T-shaped Radio telescope, second modification ;
	Location of URAN

URAN (Ukrainian Radio Interferometer of NASU)^[1] (Ukrainian: Український Радіоіонтеферометр Академії Наук - УРАН) is an array of radio-telescopes, spread across Ukraine and used for long-baseline interferometry in the 8–40 MHz range. The most sensitive of the telescopes is UTR-2. URAN-1 was built in 1975 in Zmiiv, Kharkiv oblast. URAN-2 was constructed starting in 1979 in Stepanivka village near Poltava. URAN-3 is near Shatsk, in the north-west, near the border with Poland and Belarus. URAN-4 was built in 1975 and is in the south-west, west of Odesa, by the Moldovan border.

Auxiliary telescopes are: URAN-1, with 96 dipoles in a 178 by 28 metres (584 ft × 92 ft) array; URAN-2, with 512 dipoles in a 238 by 118 metres (781 ft × 387 ft) array; URAN-3, with 256 dipoles in a 238 by 58 metres (781 ft × 190 ft) array; and URAN-4, with 128 dipoles in a 238 by 28 metres (781 ft × 92 ft) array. Because of the small number of baselines, images from URAN tend to be produced by model-fitting to sums of Gaussians rather than by direct synthesis.

URAN low-frequency VLBI system, UTR-2 and GURT radio telescopes on the map of Ukraine.
Geometrical configurations of the individual dipole antennas of the four URAN radio telescopes

References

^ Konovalenko, A.; Sodin, L.; Zakharenko, V.; Zarka, P.; Ulyanov, O.; Sidorchuk, M.; Stepkin, S.; Tokarsky, P.; Melnik, V. (2016-04-28). "The modern radio astronomy network in Ukraine: UTR-2, URAN and GURT". Experimental Astronomy. 42 (1): 11–48. Bibcode:2016ExA....42...11K. doi:10.1007/s10686-016-9498-x. ISSN 0922-6435.

Most of the information in this article comes from Valeriy Shepelev's presentation http://www.lofar.org/workshop/26Apr07_Thursday03/LOFARWorkshop_Apr07_ValeriyShepelev.pdf at an April 2007 LOFAR workshop.

References

Further reading