What is "astron"

ASTRON is the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. Its main office is in Dwingeloo in the Dwingelderveld National Park in the province of Drenthe. ASTRON is part of Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

Astron was a Soviet spacecraft launched on 23 March 1983 at 12:45:06 UTC, using Proton launcher, which was designed to fulfill an astrophysics mission. It was based on the Venera spacecraft design and was operational for six years as the largest ultraviolet space telescope during its lifetime. The project was headed by Alexander Boyarchuk.

The spacecraft was designed and constructed by the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory and NPO Lavochkin. A group of scientists from these institutions was awarded the USSR State Prize for their work on Astron.

Astron's payload consisted of an 80 cm ultraviolet telescope which was designed jointly by the USSR and France, and an X-ray spectroscope on board. It could take UV spectra 150-350 nm.

Placed into an orbit with an apogee of it could make observations outside the Earth's umbra and radiation belt. Among the most important observations by Astron were those of the SN 1987A supernova on March 4–12, 1987 and of Halley's Comet in December, 1985, that allowed a group of Soviet scientists to develop a model of the coma surrounding Halley's Comet.

1. Redirect List of Eternals

Category:Comics characters introduced in 1981

The Astron wristwatch, formally known as the Seiko Quartz-Astron 35SQ, was the world's first " quartz clock" wristwatch, i.e., one based on a quartz crystal oscillator. It is now registered on the List of IEEE Milestones as a key advance in electrical engineering.

The Astron was unveiled in Tokyo on December 25, 1969, after ten years of research and development at Suwa Seikosha (currently named Seiko Epson), a manufacturing company of Seiko Group. Within one week 100 gold watches had been sold, at a retail price of 450,000 yen (US$1,250) each (at the time, equivalent to the price of a medium-sized car). Essential elements included a Y-type quartz oscillator of 8192 cps, a hybrid integrated circuit, and a phase locked ultra-small stepping motor to turn its hands. The Astron was accurate to ±0.2 seconds per day, ±5 seconds per month, or one minute per year.

The Astron is a type of fusion power device pioneered by Nicholas Christofilos and built at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory during the 1960s and 70s. Astron used a unique confinement system that avoided several of the problems found in contemporary designs like the stellarator and magnetic mirror. Development was greatly slowed by a series of changes to the design that were made with limited oversight, and the Astron was unable to meet the goals set for it by a review committee. Funding was cancelled in 1972 and development wound down in 1973. Work on similar designs appears to have demonstrated a theoretical problem in the very design that suggests it could never be used for practical generation.