URAN

URAN (Ukrainian Radio Interferometer of NASU) is an array of radio-telescopes, finished in the last days of the Soviet Union, 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) and URAN-2 (started in 1979) are due west of it, 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.

All four of the auxiliary telescopes are 238 metres in one direction, but they are of different widths: URAN-1 has 96 dipoles in a 238mx28m array; URAN-2 has 512 in a 238mx118m; URAN-3 has 256 in a 238x58m; URAN-4 has 128 in 238x28m. 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.

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.

http://books.google.co.uk/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.