• Parliamentary Portfolio Committee Visits SARAO’s New Cape Town Offices

    The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) hosted members of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee (PPC) on Science, Technology and Innovation on Tuesday, 11 February 2025 at its Cape Town offices, taking the members on a tour of the new premises in Mowbray, Cape Town.

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  • Carnarvon schools Robotics teams visit Amazon Web Services Skills Centre in Cape Town

    Twelve learners who are part of the Robotics teams from Carnarvon High School, Carnarvon Primary School and their coaches that had participated in the National First Lego League Competition in 2024, had the opportunity to visit the Amazon Web Services Skills Centre on Friday, 31 January 2025.

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  • The Age of Giants: MeerKAT spots a troublesome cosmic beast

    South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope has uncovered an extraordinary new giant radio galaxy nicknamed Inkathazo, meaning ‘trouble’ in the African Xhosa and Zulu languages.

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  • South Africa’s MeerKAT tracks cosmic ripples in spacetime

    Diligent observing with the MeerKAT radio telescope in the Northern Karoo, of a network of rapidly spinning neutron stars over the last five years, has unveiled additional evidence for the presence of a low frequency gravitational wave background — an underlying stretching and squeezing of spacetime on which our planet Earth bobs.

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  • EU Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation and several dignitaries visit SKA site in Losberg

    A historic visit to the SKA site at Losberg in the Northern Cape took place last month when the European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Marc Lemaître, and other high-level dignitaries were hosted on Tuesday, 26 November 2024.

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  • African trainees hosted at HartRAO as new phase of the Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy (DARA) project gets underway

    Twenty students from Kenya and Madagascar have been participating in radio astronomy training at SARAO’s Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) from 4 to 15 November 2024.

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  • Northern Cape teams shine in regional First Lego League competition, three teams make it to nationals

    Eight years of intense dedication and commitment of the SARAO Robotics Schools Programme was evident at the 2024 For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) LEGO League (FLL) Regional Robotics Competition held at Carnarvon High School.

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  • TART telescope deployment in Kenya: another milestone for African radio astronomy

    August 2024 marked another milestone for African radio astronomy with the successful deployment of another TART (Transient Array Radio Telescope) telescope in Kenya.

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  • The MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey

    A million radio sources probe the motion of the solar system and provide a fundamental test of cosmology

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The Square Kilometre Array will be the largest radio telescope ever built and will produce science that changes our understanding of the universe. In Africa the SKA will be built in South Africa and eight other African Countries. The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), a facility of the National Research Foundation, is responsible for managing all radio astronomy initiatives and facilities in South Africa, including the MeerKAT Radio Telescope in the Karoo, the Geodesy and VLBI activities at the Hartebeesthoek site.

SARAO News

March 2025
May 2025
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Marion West – Science Engagement Coordinator

Marion West is the Science Engagement Coordinator at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO). In this role, she is...

Philip Mey – Functional Manager, SARAO Hartebeesthoek Site

Philip Mey is a Functional Manager at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO), which is part of the South African...

Science

TELESCOPES, INSTRUMENTS, PROGRAMMES AND PROJECTS

C-BASS C-Band All Sky Survey project

C-BASS is a project to map the sky in microwave (short-wavelength radio) radiation.

MeerKAT Digitiser

The Digitiser is the sub-system of the MeerKAT telescope which is responsible for converting the signals received from outer space...

26m and 15m telescopes at Hartebeesthoek

Hartebeesthoek is located 65 kilometers north-west of Johannesburg, just within the provincial boundary of Gauteng. The nearest town, Krugersdorp, is...

Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Re-ionisation project (PAPER)

The primary goal of PAPER is to detect emission from the neutral gas that pervaded the universe before the first...

The South African MeerKAT radio telescope, situated 90 km outside the small Northern Cape town of Carnarvon, is a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope and will be integrated into the mid-frequency component of SKA Phase 1. The MeerKAT telescope is an array of 64 interlinked receptors (a receptor is the complete antenna structure, with the main reflector, sub-reflector and all receivers, digitisers and other electronics installed). Read More

SARAO Hartebeesthoek Site is located west of Johannesburg, South Africa. built in 1961 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States of America. An 85 foot = 26 metre diameter antenna was used to get data from, and send commands to, many unmanned US space probes going beyond Earth orbit. Read More

Announcements and Upcoming Events

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