A successful TART installation workshop was held at Université des Mascareignes, on April 14-19 2024. This workshop was sponsored by SARAO, and the local organizing committee was led by Dr Keshav Sewraj. This was the first install of the new spiral antenna concept, and the first install of a TART telescope in an African partner nations. Three members of the TART team, Prof Oleg Smirnov (Rhodes University, South Africa), Dr Max Scheel (Electronics Research Foundation, New Zealand), Dr Nadeem Oozer (SARAO, South Africa), travelled to the workshop to help with the install.

"Taking lessons from the first TART "training the trainers" workshop organized by Dr Stanley Kuja at Rhodes university in 2023, the TART install at UdM went pretty smoothly. The team did an amazing job working around flooding in Dubai, as well as flooding in Mauritius, and the telescope was fully operational and making calibrated images on the last day of the workshop -- they did an epic job"

The new array layout is designed to be fabricated on site, with the antennas located on spiral arms at carefully chosen positions that maximize the imaging performance of the TART.

TART volunteers Keshav Sewraj, Max Scheel, Oleg Smirnov, Nadeem Oozeer during assembly of the TART array at the workshop. Image Oleg Smirnov, licensed under CC BY 4.0‍

As part of the workshop a day was devoted to public talks on the TART project (Tim Molteno, University of Otago), the TART telescope (Max Scheel), radio astronomy imaging (Prof Oleg Smirnov), and working with TART data by Dr Nadeem Oozeer. The workshop was attended by university students, advanced high-school students and members of the Mauritian research and education community.

University students, high-school students and members of the Mauritian community listening to public talks given by workshop presenters, licensed under CC BY 4.0‍

Photos​

The fully assembled TART spiral antenna array is located on the roof of an Engineering Laboratory building on the Bel Air Campus of Université des Mascareignes.

Images​

We were delighted to find that the array was easily calibrated and now produces excellent images. Here is an image showing a bright unknown object at about 40 degrees elevation to the North.

This image was made using these instructions.

The first international TART workshop was held at Rhodes University from 9-13 October 2023. This workshop was sponsored by SARAO, and the local organizing committee was led by Dr Stanley Kuja. The press release from SARAO is here.

Members of the TART team were there were myself, Rikus and Ben.

TART volunteers Ben Hugo and Rukus Human along with Takalani, Tim and Oleg during assembly of the TART array at the workshop.

TART installations in SKA African Partner nations​

During the workshop it was learned that the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), who host the SKA project in South Africa, will be funding the installation of a TART telescope in many of the SKA African partner nations. These are:

• Botswana
• Ghana
• Kenya
• Madagascar
• Mauritius
• Mozambique
• Namibia
• Zambia

Delegates from each of these partner nations were present at the workshop, along with astronomers from Italy, Portugal, South Africa and further afield.

Photos​

The TART logo​

We need a logo, and are lucky enough to have a volunteer with a graphics design background to join up! After the logo comes the TART T-shirt. I'd like to make the T-Shirt an annual event.

Team Expansion​

We've had a good deal of expansion. The TART project has three teams

• Rhodes: Ben, Kenda, Rickus*, Stanley, Oleg
• SARAO: Ben, Oleg, Ruby, Nadeem
• Stellenbosch: Rikus, Danie
• New Zealand: Tim, Phill, Max, Pat

Rickus (*) gets honorary membership of the Rhodes team for driving from Stellenbosch to Rhodes to help with the installation.

The TART project has had a lot to celebrate in 2022. What follows is a brief summary of events that took place.

Team Expansion​

We've had a good deal of expansion. The TART project has three teams

• Rhodes: Sonia, Ben, Rickus*, Stanley, Oleg, Patrice
• SARAO: Ben, Oleg, Ruby, Nadeem
• Stellenbosch: Rikus, Danie
• New Zealand: Tim, Phill, Max

Rickus (*) gets honourary membership of the Rhodes team for driving from Stellenbosch to Rhodes to help with the installation.

TART-3 Updates​

The NZ team has been hard at work on TART-3. Progress is now accelerating as the radio module is now in early testing.

TART-3 Radio Module	Features
	Two radios per module, PCI-e connector, Easy to replace modules

Rhodes TART comissioning​

Gained coverage in the media thanks to excellent organizing by the Rhodes team (Sonia, Rickus (hon), Stanley, Oleg, Patrice). This telescope was a 3-arm interferometer with a new design that allows easy reconfiguration.

The Rhodes student team	Dignitaries

Establishing a new Github home​

We began the process of moving the github repositories to a new home (https://github.com/tart-telescope). This also involves breaking up the huge monolithic TART repository in to smaller and more managable repositories.

Documentation Updates​

• New jupyter notebooks by Ruby (tart notebooks) these notebooks are going to be used in the inaugural TART workshop held at Rhodes.
• A new website based on Docosaurus (here)

Measurement Set updates​

Huge work by Ben Hugo on making the TART measurement set tools tart2ms. These have allowed some fantastic features:

• Rephasing of observations into a single measurement set.
• Incorporation of Catalogue in JSON into the measurement set.
• This allows potentially much more sensitive imaging!

CASA calibration​

Rhodes Calibration with CASA	Cal phase vs time

TART workshops progress​

Three TART workshops are now in various stages of preparation.

• Jan 16-17: Breakthrough listen @ Rhodes (Stanley, Ben, Oleg)
• Mid 2023: Gabon (Patrice)
• Mid 2023: Ghana (Stanley)

TART talks, mentions in media e.t.c​

• Rhodes opening... (see above)
• Sonia: gave a talk to the RATT group
• Patrice: presented to African Astronomical Society (August?)
• Stanley & Tim: Talk in Kenya (8/12/22)