| Description: | The 32-meter Irbene radio telescope is located near Ventspils, Latvia, close to the Baltic Sea. It is a fully steerable parabolic antenna, operated by the Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Center (VIRAC). The main purpose of VIRAC is to take part in observations of cosmic sources of natural and artificial radiation in order to accumulate observational data for fundamental and applied research programs such as radio astronomy and astrophysics, cosmology, geophysics, geodynamics, geodesy, and coordinate-time service. Currently one of the main VIRAC goals is to become a member of the European VLBI Network (EVN).
A great milestone was achieved on 2013 March 19, when the Irbene telescope took part in real-time e-VLBI observations with the rest of the e-EVN. Fringes with good signal-to-noise ratio were produced. A total data-rate of 512 Mbit/s was sent from the telescope to JIVE in real-time. The image in the upper right corner shows the test source (0234+285) image, made from the e-EVN+Irbene data.
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