First interferometric observations in Irbene - Torun baseline conducted by VIRAC

Abstract

Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Centre (VIRAC, Latvia) operates two radio telescopes, RT-16 and RT-32 accordingly, with fully steerable 16-and 32-m Cassegrain type antennas. The main receiving systems of the both telescopes are cryogenic receivers with 4.5-8.8 GHz frequency range. Additionally, in 2019 radio telescope RT-32 will be equipped with a new L band receiver. Data registration units of the both antennas are suitable for interferometric observations. The Nicolaus Copernicus University Department of Radio Astronomy in Torun, Poland, operates a 32m radio telescope RT-4, which also works in similar bands-L, C and Mand regularly participates in the VLBI observations. Moreover, VIRAC possesses a high-performance computer cluster with SFXC software correlator developed at JIVE. In the spring 2018, VIRAC team with support from Torun group conducted several VLBI experiments in the baseline Irbene-Torun using the Irbene RT-16 radio telescope and Torun RT-4 radio telescope. Successful fringes and FITS files with obtained uv data implies that data correlation and post processing facilities established in VIRAC allow to run small-scale interferometric tasks.