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
Telescopes	Ukrainian T-shaped Radio telescope, second modification
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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 (built in 1975 in Zmiiv (Kharkiv oblast) ) and URAN-2 (construction started in 1979 in Stepanivka village near Poltava), URAN-3 is near Shatsk, in the north-west corner of Ukraine by the point where Poland and Belarus meet Ukraine, and URAN-4 (built in 1975) is in the south-west, a little west of Odessa and by the Moldovan border.

URAN low-frequency VLBI system, UTR-2 and GURT radio telescopes on the map of Ukraine.

Auxiliary telescopes are URAN-1 has 96 dipoles in a 178 x 28m array; URAN-2 has 512 in a 238 x 118m; URAN-3 has 256 in a 238 x 58m; URAN-4 has 128 in 238 x 28m. 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.

Geometrical configurations of the four URAN radio telescopes.

References

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.

https://books.google.com/books?id=e6NDa-5VHNYC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=URAN+interferometer&source=bl&ots=l0zod-iHuc&sig=HJxIDorytq3h54jPAZGYIFpezto&hl=en&sa=X&ei=v93gU-y5Domy0QWjr4CYCw&ved=0CFYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=URAN%20interferometer&f=false ("A Brief History of Radio Astronomy in the USSR: A Collection of Scientific Essays") gave more information about the construction dates.