First interferometric observations in Irbene - Torun baseline conducted by VIRAC

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 32-m radio telescope RT-4, which also works in similar bands – L, C and M – and 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.