Nançay Radio Observatory

Nançay Radio Observatory

(nahn -say) A field station of the Paris Observatory located 200 km south of Paris and operated since 1953. It contains the Decimetric Radio Telescope, a transit instrument with a collecting area of 200 × 35 meters that can observe at 1.42, 1.66, and 3.2 GHz and has been used for VLBI since 1984, a 3.2 × 1.2 km T-shaped radio heliograph used for fast solar imaging, and the Decametric Array, 100 × 10 meters in area, used at 15 to 100 MHz for planetary and solar observations.

Collins Dictionary of Astronomy © Market House Books Ltd, 2006