RadioAstron -- a Telescope with a Size of 300 000 km: Main Parameters and First Observational Results

Abstract

The Russian Academy of Sciences and Federal Space Agency, together with the participation of many international organizations, worked toward the launch of the RadioAstron orbiting space observatory with its onboard 10-m reflector radio telescope from the Baikonur cosmodrome on July 18, 2011. Together with some of the largest ground-based radio telescopes and a set of stations for tracking, collecting, and reducing the data obtained, this space radio telescope forms a multi-antenna ground-space radio interferometer with extremely long baselines, making it possible for the first time to study various objects in the Universe with angular resolutions a million times better than is possible with the human eye. The project is targeted at systematic studies of compact radio-emitting sources and their dynamics. Objects to be studied include supermassive black holes, accretion disks, and relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei, stellar-mass black holes, neutron stars and hypothetical quark stars, regions of formation of stars and planetary systems in our and other galaxies, interplanetary and interstellar plasma, and the gravitational field of the Earth. The results of ground-based and inflight tests of the space radio telescope carried out in both autonomous and ground-space interferometric regimes are reported. The derived characteristics are in agreement with the main requirements of the project. The astrophysical science program has begun.

54 pages, 11 figures; published by Astronomicheskij Zhurnal (in Russian) and Astronomy Reports (in English)

References in corpus (4)

• Relativistic Beaming and the Intrinsic Properties of Extragalactic Radio Jets
• Water maser motions in W3(OH) and a determination of its distance
• Survey of Instantaneous 1-22 GHz Spectra of 550 Compact Extragalactic Objects with Declinations from -30deg to +43deg
• Spacecraft VLBI and Doppler tracking: algorithms and implementation

Cited by in corpus (77)

• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. II. Array and Instrumentation
• The eROSITA X-ray telescope on SRG
• The SRG X-ray orbital observatory, its telescopes and first scientific results
• Probing a nonlinear electrodynamics black hole with thin accretion disk, shadow and deflection angle with M87* and Sgr A* from EHT
• 230 GHz VLBI observations of M87: event-horizon-scale structure at the enhanced very-high-energy $\gamma$-ray state in 2012
• Dehnen halo effect on a black hole in an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy
• Dark matter effect on the weak deflection angle by black holes at the center of Milky Way and M87 galaxies
• Simulations of imaging the event horizon of Sagittarius A* from space
• The Black Hole Explorer: Motivation and Vision
• Black hole in quantum wave dark matter
• The Radio Fundamental Catalogue. I. Astrometry
• Discovery of Substructure in the Scatter-Broadened Image of Sgr A*
• Constraints on charged Symmergent black hole from shadow and lensing
• Filamentary structures as the origin of blazar jet radio variability
• Origins Space Telescope Mission Concept Study Report
• PSR B0329+54: Substructure in the scatter-broadened image discovered with RadioAstron on baselines up to 330,000 km
• Shadow and deflection angle of asymptotic, magnetically-charged, non-singular black hole
• Probing the innermost regions of AGN jets and their magnetic fields with RadioAstron II. Observations of 3C 273 at minimum activity
• Software correlator for Radioastron mission
• Brightness temperature constraints from interferometric visibilities
• Shadow cast by a rotating and nonlinear magnetic-charged black hole in perfect fluid dark matter
• The Chinese space millimeter-wavelength VLBI array - a step toward imaging the most compact astronomical objects
• Using space-VLBI to probe gravity around Sgr A*
• Lightlike Geodesics and Gravitational Lensing in the Spacetime of an Accelerating Black Hole
• Radio Pulsars
• RadioAstron reveals a spine-sheath jet structure in 3C 273
• The high brightness temperature of B0529+483 revealed by RadioAstron and implications for interstellar scattering
• Space very long baseline interferometry in China
• RadioAstron Space VLBI Imaging of the jet in M87: I. Detection of high brightness temperature at 22 GHz
• RadioAstron discovery of a mini-cocoon around the restarted parsec-scale jet in 3C 84
• Imaging sensitivity of a linear interferometer array on lunar orbit
• RadioAstron as a target and as an instrument: Enhancing the Space VLBI mission's scientific output
• Gamma- and Cosmic-Ray Observations with the GAMMA-400 Gamma-Ray Telescope
• The gravitational redshift monitored with RadioAstron from near Earth up to 350,000 km
• H${}_2$O MegaMaser emission in NGC 4258 indicative of a periodic disc instability
• Analysis of Orbital Configurations for Millimetron Space Observatory
• Overview of the Observing System and Initial Scientific Accomplishments of the East Asian VLBI Network (EAVN)
• Localizing the $\gamma$-ray emitting region in the blazar TXS 2013+370
• High spectral resolution multi-tone Spacecraft Doppler tracking software: Algorithms and implementations
• Orbital configurations of spaceborne interferometers for studying photon rings of supermassive black holes
• Probing the innermost regions of AGN jets and their magnetic fields with RadioAstron IV. The quasar 3C 345 at 18 cm: Magnetic field structure and brightness temperature
• First Space-VLBI Observations of Sagittarius A*
• A multi-frequency study of sub-parsec jets with the Event Horizon Telescope
• Substructure of visibility functions from scattered radio emission of pulsars through space VLBI
• A Balloon-Borne Very Long Baseline Interferometry Experiment in the Stratosphere: Systems Design and Developments
• Gravitational redshift test of EEP with RA from near Earth to the distance of the Moon
• Observing the Time Evolution of the Multi-Component Nucleus of 3C\,84
• Applying the theory of general relativity to reducing geodetic VLBI data
• Black Hole Shadow Observations with Space-Ground Interferometers
• The antenna phase center motion effect in high-accuracy spacecraft tracking experiments
• Solar System-scale interferometry on fast radio bursts could measure cosmic distances with sub-percent precision
• Imaging the event horizon of M87* from space on different timescales
• Unveiling the Bent Jet Structure and Polarization of OJ 287 at 1.7 GHz with Space VLBI
• Gravitational Lensing in the Charged NUT-de Sitter Spacetime
• Revealing a ribbon-like jet in OJ 287 with RadioAstron
• Configuration of the global magnetic field in AGN parsec-scale jets
• Lunar Orbital VLBI Experiment: motivation, scientific purposes and status
• ALMA polarimetry of radio-quiet AGNs
• Development of cross-correlation spectrometry and the coherent structures of maser sources
• The most compact bright radio-loud AGN -- I. A new target sample selected for the space VLBI
• The Japanese Vision for the Black Hole Explorer Mission
• Evolution, speed, and precession of the parsec-scale jet in the 3C 84 radio galaxy
• Model Predictions of the Results of Interferometric Observations for Stars under Conditions of Strong Gravitational Scattering by Black Holes and Wormholes
• Ionospheric effects in VLBI measured with space-ground interferometer RadioAstron
• Neural Network Astronomy as a New Tool for Observing Bright and Compact Objects
• GALLIFRAY -- A geometric modeling and parameter estimation framework for black hole images using bayesian techniques
• Precision measurement of gravitational frequency shift of radio signals using Rao-Cramer estimates
• Anchored in Shadows: Tying the Celestial Reference Frame Directly to Black Hole Event Horizons
• Revisiting 3C 279 jet morphology with space VLBI at 26 microarcsecond resolution
• A Brief History of Space VLBI
• Effect of Earth's Oblateness on Black Hole Imaging Through Earth-Space and Space-Space VLBI
• Toward Optimisation of a Sub-Terahertz Spaceborne VLBI Mission
• First Very Long Baseline Interferometry Fringe Detection at 690GHz
• The science case and challenges of space-borne sub-millimeter interferometry
• High Resolution Imaging of a Black Hole Shadow with Millimetron Orbit around Lagrange Point L2
• Beyond Sgr A* and M87*: Sub-Microarcsecond Black Hole Shadow Detection via Lunar-based Extremely Long Baseline Interferometry
• The antenna phase center motion effect in space-based experiments for fundamental physics and astronomy