Telescope built by Karoo locals releases data to astronomers around the world
The HERA telescope, an array of 350 antennas situated next to MeerKAT in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, is being built by a team of local artisans from the town of Carnarvon. It has now released its first set of observations to the world, giving a glimpse of what the Universe looked like about 13 billion years ago. Read more.
A team of four Carnarvon based artisans began construction of the HERA telescope in early 2015. The team was supervised by Cape Town-based Kathryn Rosie – HERA Project Engineer at the time, and Matthys Maree (Carnarvon) – at the time filling in as construction supervisor. “Construction of the array is phased in such a way that, as antennas are completed, they are hooked into the telescope data correlation system. This enables observations and early science to be carried out while construction continues,” says Rosie. After the initial construction, Phase I observations were carried out in 2017-2018 throughout the Southern Summer using about 50 dishes.
