Study of the Power Beam Pattern of RATAN-600 During the Deep RZF Survey (1998-2003)

TL;DR

This study develops an experimental method to construct the power beam pattern of RATAN-600 using NVSS sources observed during a deep sky survey, assessing its stability and flux measurement accuracy over several years.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach for constructing and validating the power beam pattern of RATAN-600 based on survey data and compares different methods for accuracy.

Findings

The experimental PB closely matches the computed PB with low deviations.

The central part of the PB remains stable over the survey period.

Flux measurements of sources are accurate within estimated uncertainties.

Abstract

This paper proposes a method for constructing an experimental power beam pattern (PB) of RATAN-600 based on the sample of NVSS sources observed in the process of a deep sky survey near local zenith. The data obtained from observations of radio sources at wave 7.6 cm in nine bands of the survey (the 2002 and 2003 sets) are used to construct vertical PB of the telescope at rather large offsets from the central horizontal section of the PB (+/-36'). The experimental PBs obtained using different methods are compared and the root-mean-square deviations of the experimental PB from the corresponding computed PB are determined. The stability of the power beam pattern in its central part (+/-6') during the RATAN-600 Zenith Field (RZF) survey (1998-2003) and the accuracies of the fluxes of the sources observed within the framework of this survey and included into the RZF catalog are estimated.