Daily Image
27-06-2018
RadioAstron in Dwingeloo
| Submitter: | Gina Maffey and Leonid Gurvits |
| Description: | From 25th-29th June 2018 ASTRON and JIVE are co-hosting the 31st RadioAstron International Science Council (RISC) and Science Working Groups' meetings. RadioAstron, the international Space VLBI (SVLBI) mission, has been operating in orbit for almost seven years. Owing to its baseline comparable in length to the distance from the Earth to the Moon, RadioAstron has established a number of records in angular resolution in astronomy. The 10-meter space-borne radio telescope of the RadioAstron mission on board the spacecraft "Spektr-R" conducts observations at four standard VLBI frequency bands, while virtually all earth-based radio telescopes able to conduct VLBI observations at the RadioAstron frequency bands are involved. The European VLBI Network plays a prominent role and RadioAstron SVLBI data is correlated at the Astro-Space Center, Moscow, the Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie, Bonn and JIVE, Dwingeloo. To date the mission has successfully detected extremely high brightness temperatures in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and exceptionally compact maser spots in Galactic and extragalactic hydroxyl (at 18 cm) and water vapour (1.35 cm) masers. Pulsar observations at 92 cm have revealed unexpected complexity of the Galactic interstellar medium, while observations of both pulsars and quasars on interferometric baselines exceeding the Earth's diameter by an order of magnitude, indicated manifestation of the elusive refracting scattering in the interstellar medium. Finally, as a "non-radio astronomy" bonus, the RadioAstron's on-board H-maser enabled researchers to attempt to verify the cornerstone of the fundamental physics, the Einstein Equivalence Principle. The RadioAstron mission is led by the Astro-Space Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Roscosmos (the Russian State Corporation). Many partners in Europe, Australia, Canada and USA are actively involved in the RadioAstron endeavour. This week RISC are reviewing the current operational status of the mission, its scientific results and planning for the next operational year. The Space VLBI endeavour continues. |
| Copyright: | Lavochkin Science and Production Association; JIVE |
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