04 February 2004 10:27
Russia creates global telescope to monitor Earth, space
St Petersburg, 3 February: The Kvazar-KVO [Quasar], a global telescope which is a unique domestic astronomical tool
designed to explore the Earth and space, and a data processing centre have been put into operation in the village of
Svetloye on the Karelian Isthmus, the scientific head of the project, Andrey Finkelshteyn, told journalists at the
ITAR-TASS regional centre in St Petersburg today.
Finkelshteyn is the director of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Applied Astronomy and a corresponding
member of the academy.
Kvazar is a global radio telescope which consists of three observatories, each having a radio telescope 32 metres in
diameter, the scientist said. One electronic dish is located in Russia's northwestern region outside St Petersburg
and another in the village of Zelenchukskaya in the North Caucasus, and a third one at Badary, not far from Lake
Baykal.
Located at different longitudes and latitudes across an area of 12m square kilometres in Russia, the scientific tools
[telescopes] are linked by communications channels with a computerized monitoring and processing centre in the village
of Svetloye, the scientist said. The radiointerferometric complex makes it possible to study the structure of the
universe, warn about the threat of an [approaching] asteroid, forecast earthquakes, monitor the world's oceans,
forecast tsunamis and make the yearly cycles of continental shift more precise.
Kvazar opens up opportunities for participation, on a cooperative basis, in international scientific programmes
carried out by US and European science centres, Finkelshteyn said.
[ITAR-TASS news agency] |
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