7.5m C-BASS – C-band All Sky Survey Southern Telescope

The C-Band All Sky Survey (C-BASS), will map the whole sky in temperature and polarization at 5GHz. The primary aim of C-BASS will be to allow accurate subtraction of the Galactic synchrotron polarization from the data produced by CMB polarization experiments.

This is a joint project of the University of Manchester, the University of Oxford and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the USA, and Rhodes University and the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) in South Africa.

Two antennae have been obtained for the project in South Africa, donated by the South African telecommunications company Telkom.

C-BASS Hartebeesthoek

The first antenna, C-BASS Hartebeesthoek, was relocated to the HartRAO Hartebeesthoek site from the Telkom site 5km away in February 2007. It is intended for development and testing.

C-BASS Klerefontein

The second antenna, C-BASS Klerefontein, was relocated to the Klerefontein base near the Karoo Array Telescope site at the beginning of June 2009. This will be the operational antenna.