RATAN 600

Admission of the RATAN-600

The RATAN 600 ( Russian РАТАН-600 - РА дио Т елескоп А кадемии Н аук - Radio Telescope of the Academy of Sciences ) is the radio telescope with the largest diameter in the world and has been in operation since 1974. It is located in Russia on the southern edge of the Stanitsa Zelenchukskaya (Autonomous Republic of Karachay-Cherkessia ) in the northern Caucasus , not far from the Zelenchuk Observatory .

construction

The telescope consists of 895 reflector plates arranged in a circle with a diameter of 576 meters. These reflect the signals from a source at one point in the sky onto up to three conical secondary reflectors. The secondary reflectors can focus on different receivers with wavelength ranges between 2 cm and 50 cm. Due to the large diameter, the telescope achieves a very good angular resolution of only 2 arc seconds , but at the expense of the image quality. Only networks of interconnected radio telescopes such as the “ Very Large Array ” or the “ Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array ” achieve higher angular resolutions .

gallery

One of the conical secondary reflectors of the RATAN-600
Reflector plates measuring 11.4 m × 2.0 m
One of the RATAN-600's conical secondary reflectors on a 1987 USSR postage stamp