Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 1992. 30: 653-703 Copyright © 1993 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

3.2.5 OBSERVATIONS ON THE RATAN 600 METER TELESCOPE The Ratan 600 meter telescope has been used for observations of the microwave background radiation since the early 1970's. The most recent published results from this telescope Berlin et al (1983, 1984) are given in Table 3. At the observing frequency of 3.9 GHz there is a serious problem of confusion by discrete sources, and the analysis of the observations requires large corrections for confusion before a limit can be placed on the anisotropy of the microwave background radiation.

Amirkhanyan (1987) has made an independent estimate of the confusion level and claims that the results quoted by Berlin et al are too low by an order of magnitude. Lasenby (1981) reached a similar conclusion regarding earlier studies with this telescope. Unfortunately few details of the observations by Berlin et al, and of the data analysis, are available, so that, pending a detailed account, it would seem wise to adopt the more conservative limits determined by Amirkhanyan which are also given in Table 3.