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 (from Lati ...

, near

Bengaluru Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

. It is operated jointly by

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

and the

Indian Institute of Astrophysics The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), with its headquarters in Bengaluru, is an autonomous research institute wholly funded 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

Chikkaballapur district Chikkaballāpura district is a district in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. On 23 August 2007, it was carved out of the pre-existing Kolar district, which was the fourth largest district (before bifurcation) of Karnataka, by moving the ...

(Latitude:13.60° N; Longitude:77.44° E), 100 km north of

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 In astronomy, a corona (: coronas or coronae) is the outermost layer of a star's Stellar atmosphere, atmosphere. It is a hot but relatively luminosity, dim region of Plasma (physics), plasma populated by intermittent coronal structures such as so ...

, 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 (''pulsating star, on the model of quasar'') 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 pointin ...

Facilities

The Gauribidanur Observatory has a 6-meter

radio telescope A radio telescope is a specialized antenna (radio), 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 r ...

, a radio

heliograph A heliograph () is a solar telegraph system that signals by flashes of sunlight (generally using Morse code from the 1840s) reflected by a mirror. The flashes are produced by momentarily pivoting the mirror, or by interrupting the beam with a s ...

, 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