The Gauribidanur Radio Observatory is a radio telescope observatory located at

Gauribidanur Gauribidanur is a taluk situated in Chikkaballapur district in the Indian state of Karnataka. Geography Gauribidanur is at . It has an average elevation of 694 metres (2276 feet). Demographics India census A census is the proc ...

, near Bengaluru. It is operated jointly by

Raman Research Institute The Raman Research Institute (RRI) is an institute for scientific research located in Bangalore, India. It was founded by Nobel laureate C. V. Raman in 1948. Although it began as an institute privately owned by Sir C. V. Raman, it is now fund ...

and the

Indian Institute of Astrophysics The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), with its headquarters in Bengaluru,is an autonomous Research Institute wholly financed by the department of Science and Technology, Government of India. IIA conducts research primarily in the areas of ...

. The observatory has been in operation since 1976.

Location

The Gauribidanur Observatory is located at Gauribidanur kolar diatrict (Latitude:13.60° N; Longitude:77.44° E), 100 km north of Bengaluru.

Science and observation

The Observatory has been used for studying various aspects of the Sun, galaxies and pulsars. A few observations with the array have been the first two-dimensional images of radio emission from slowly varying discrete sources in the outer

solar corona A corona ( coronas or coronae) is the outermost layer of a star's atmosphere. It consists of plasma. The Sun's corona lies above the chromosphere and extends millions of kilometres into outer space. It is most easily seen during a total solar e ...

, an all-sky survey of radio sources at 34.5 MHz in the declination range -30° S to 60° N, and a low frequency carbon recombination lines in astrophysical sources. Studies have also been done of gaseous remnants of exploding stars and the apparently vacant space between members of a cluster of galaxies. Currently, the studies are targeted at

pulsars A pulsar (from ''pulsating radio source'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. This radiation can be observed only when a beam of emission is pointing toward E ...

Facilities

The Gauribidanur Observatory has a 6-meter

radio telescope A radio telescope is a specialized antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the radio frequency ...

, a radio

heliograph A heliograph () is a semaphore system that signals by flashes of sunlight (generally using Morse code) reflected by a mirror. The flashes are produced by momentarily pivoting the mirror, or by interrupting the beam with a shutter. The heliograp ...

, a high resolution radio spectrograph and a gravitational laboratory.

Gauribidanur Telescope

The Gauribidanur Telescope is a decameter wave radio telescope. It consists of 1000 dipoles arranged in a "T" configuration. It consists of 1.4 km East-West Arm and a 0.5 km South Arm.

Gauribidanur Radio Heliograph

The Gauribidanur Radio Heliograph is a radioheliograph used to obtain two dimensional pictures of the outer solar corona at frequencies from 40-150 MHz. It has been operating since 1997. It consists of 192 log-periodic dipoles arranged in a "T" configuration.

References