Overview and Performance of the Ukrainian SLR Station "Lviv-1831"

Abstract

Overview and Performance of the Ukrainian SLR Station "Lviv-1831"The paper presents the current status and performance of the SLR station "Lviv-1831". The present equipment allows ranging of satellite not lower than 900 km with a single shot precision about 50 mm. The team works over system upgrade and performance improvement. It includes: neutral filters wheel developing for equilibration of the amplitude of reflected pulses from different satellites, building up the shutter in the face of PMT for the spurious light pulses blocking. Also the new adjusting of the telescope optical mechanical systems was made. After that investigation the new telescope error model was built with an accuracy 20arcsec that allowed at the first time test ranging of the "shadowed" satellite passes. In the near future the team will finish installation and testing of the new PMT Hamamatsu H6780. Maiden upgrades should better the performance and ranging accuracy by the factor of 2-3.