Orgov Radio-Optical Telescope

The telescope is located at the RRI Aragats Scientific Centre in Orgov, Armenia. It is on Mount Aragats,[1] at a height of 1,711 metres (5,614 ft).[2]

The radio telescope has a diameter of 54 m (177 ft). It is hemispherical, and fixed to the ground, with a movable secondary mirror with a diameter of 5 m (16 ft).[1] This provides a useful diameter of 32 m (105 ft). It has a surface accuracy around 70/100 μm, giving an operating wavelength of 30-3mm (10-100GHz),[3] and was originally designed to observe down to 1 mm (300 GHz).[1]

The optical telescope has a 2.6 m (8.5 ft) mirror, with a 10 m (33 ft) focal length.[1] Telescope never operates from the date of its implementation.

Construction took place between 1975 and 1985,[1] first operating in 1986.[3] It was not damaged by the 1988 Armenian earthquake,[2] and was used for observations between 1987 and 1990.[2]

It stopped being used around 1990, and in the mid-1990s a plan to restore the telescope to use it for astronomy was proposed.[3] It was subsequently restructured in 1995-2010, with a new control computer, new feeds, and observations in collaboration with the Astronomical Society of Russia and the National Technical University of Athens.[2]

From around 2012 onwards, moving the secondary mirror was not possible due to a defective control arm, with a restoration plan in 2018 so that the telescope can be used in the European VLBI Network.[2]