SARAO Science

SARAO (South African Radio Astronomy Observatory) is the national radio astronomy facility of South Africa. It operates and manages radio telescopes, including MeerKAT and the South African Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project. SARAO is involved in a range of scientific research areas, including:

Galactic and Extragalactic Astronomy: Studying the structure, formation, and evolution of galaxies and other celestial objects.
Pulsar Research: Observing and understanding pulsars, which are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars.
Cosmology: Investigating the large-scale structure of the universe, dark matter, and dark energy.
Transient Astronomy: Detecting and studying transient astronomical events such as supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and fast radio bursts.
Solar System Studies: Observing objects within our solar system, including the sun, planets, and smaller bodies like asteroids and comets.

SARAO’s instruments, particularly MeerKAT, provide astronomers with highly sensitive data, enabling groundbreaking research and discoveries across these various fields of astronomy.

Bursts from Space: Citizen Science Project

Bursts from Space: Citizen Science Project

Projects Telescopes and Instruments – Share
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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The South African National Ventilator Project (NVP)

The South African National Ventilator Project (NVP)

Projects Telescopes and Instruments – Share
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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VLBI Global Observing System (VGOS)

VLBI Global Observing System (VGOS)

Hartebeesthoek Johannesburg Observatory Telescopes and Instruments – Share
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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Hydrogen Intensity and Real-time Analysis eXperiment (HIRAX)

Hydrogen Intensity and Real-time Analysis eXperiment (HIRAX)

Hartebeesthoek Johannesburg Observatory Telescopes and Instruments – Share
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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MeerKAT Telescope

MeerKAT Telescope

Telescopes and Instruments – Share
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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Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen (REACH)

Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen (REACH)

Losberg Northern Cape Telescopes and Instruments – Share
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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Transient Array Radio Telescope (TART)

Transient Array Radio Telescope (TART)

Hartebeesthoek Johannesburg Observatory Telescopes and Instruments – Share
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 Epoch of Reionisation Array radio telescope (HERA)

Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation Array radio telescope (HERA)

Telescopes and Instruments – Share
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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SKA-MPI

SKA-MPI

Losberg Northern Cape Telescopes and Instruments – Share
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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South Africa’s HIRAX telescope driving industry engagements

South Africa’s HIRAX telescope driving industry engagements

Hartebeesthoek Johannesburg Observatory Telescopes and Instruments – Share
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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Geodesy Programme

Geodesy Programme

Projects Telescopes and Instruments – Share
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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Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Re-ionisation project (PAPER)

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

Telescopes and Instruments – Share
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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The SARAO Users Committee is established in order to advise the SARAO Managing Director and staff on all aspects of SARAO activities that affect the users and potential users of its facilities.

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Did you know?

Building the SKA will require the development of cutting edge technology and innovation, including the design of the world’s fastest supercomputers to process data at rates greater than the current global internet traffic.

The SKA will use thousands of radio antennas, with different antenna technologies. This will enable astronomers to probe the universe in unprecedented detail. The SKA will also be able to survey the entire sky much faster than any radio astronomy facility currently in existence.