South Africa’s HIRAX telescope driving industry engagements
The Hydrogen and Real-time Analysis eXperiment (HIRAX), led out of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), has deployed two new prototype telescope dish designs, one aluminium and the other fibreglass, at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) Hartebeesthoek in Gauteng. The fibreglass dish was designed and manufactured by MMS Technology in Pretoria, and the aluminium dish was designed and manufactured through a partnership between NJV Consulting and Rebcon in Durban. Funding for the HIRAX prototype...
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VLBI Global Observing System (VGOS)
The International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry (IVS) has been developing the next generation of VLBI system - VLBI Global Observing System (VGOS). They have identified the need for modern, fast slewing, broadband radio telescopes to realise the goal of improving accuracy by a factor of 10 - from 1 cm down to 1 mm - across global baselines.
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The South African National Ventilator Project (NVP)
The South African National Ventilator Project (NVP) is a co-ordinated national effort in response to the Covid-19 pandemic involving the local design and manufacture of breathing apparatus devices used in patient treatment. Read more
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MeerKAT Digitiser
The Digitiser is the sub-system of the MeerKAT telescope which is responsible for converting the signals received from outer space into a digital format that can be manipulated by digital processing platforms such as computers and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs)
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C-BASS C-Band All Sky Survey project
C-BASS is a project to map the sky in microwave (short-wavelength radio) radiation.
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KAT-7 Telescopes
The seven-dish MeerKAT precursor array, KAT-7, is the world’s first radio telescope array consisting of composite antenna structures.
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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 32 km distant. The telescope is situated in an isolated valley which affords protection from terrestial interference.
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Transient Array Radio Telescope (TART)
TART is a 24-element imaging radio telescope. The TART is a 24-element synthesis array radio-telescope. It observes the entire sky continuously and is optimized to detect transient events, including satellites, near-earth objects and high-energy cosmic rays. The telescope is also designed to serve as a platform for the development of new imaging algorithms. The TART telescope is an open source project. Development is hosted on github. The fully assembled TART spiral antenna array is located...
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Hydrogen Intensity and Real-time Analysis eXperiment (HIRAX)
A future experiment on site will be the Hydrogen Intensity and Real-time Analysis eXperiment (HIRAX). This radio telescope array will map a large area of the southern sky in radio continuum and HI, while being used to detect Fast Radio Bursts, over a frequency range of 400 – 800 MHz. It is currently in the early development stage, with a number of prototypes located at HartRAO. Construction of the first representative dish and infrastructure in...
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Bursts from Space: Citizen Science Project
Looking at the sky with radio telescopes provides a unique insight into a range of exciting and exotic phenomena. From stellar flares on nearby stars to exploding supernovae in a different galaxy, radio transients can be as varied as they are interesting. We use the term radio transient as a catch-all for everything that might be interesting and varying in the radio sky, but here's a sample of some of the interesting radio transients we...
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Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen (REACH)
The Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen (REACH) is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, UK, and Stellenbosch University, South Africa. REACH’s goal is to detect the global cosmic dawn hydrogen signal using a single dipole antenna to sample a large area of sky at low frequencies, and hence a large volume of the early Universe. It is primarily funded by the Kavli Foundation and Stellenbosch University. Deployment to the Karoo site...
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SKA-MPI
SKA-MPI is one of two prototype SKA dishes and funded by the German Max-Planck Society. It was built at the SARAO site in the Karoo. It has been used for early verification of the hardware and to support development of the SKA dishes. It is now being used to do a single-dish science programme.
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Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation Array radio telescope (HERA)
To solve the mystery of how we came to be where we are, astronomers must look back in time to a transitional period of cosmic history that has been dubbed the “epoch of reionisation”.
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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 galaxies and black holes were formed. This ‘epoch of reionization’, as it is called, is the last frontier in observational cosmology.
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Geodesy Programme
Geodesy, also called geodetics, a branch of earth sciences, is the scientific discipline that deals with the measurement and representation of the Earth, including its gravitational field, in a three-dimensional time-varying space. Geodesists also study geodynamical phenomena such as crustal motion, tides, and polar motion.
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MeerKAT Telescope
MeerKAT is a radio interferometer located in the Northern Cape province of South Africa (at 30 deg South, 21 deg East) consisting of 64 dishes with baselines of up to 8 km. Its superb sensitivity, ~2000 baselines, centrally concentrated distribution (~3/4 of the dishes are located in a 1 km diameter core), substantial field of view (~1 deg FWHM at 1.4 GHz), and unblocked aperture design, make it uniquely suited to a variety of studies.
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