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.

Acknowledgements​

The TART team would like to thank the University of Otago for providing the hardware, the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) for supporting travel and staff time. We're also extremely grateful to the DARA project for supporting the accomodation in Mauritus.

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.

Le projet TART a eu beaucoup à célébrer en 2022. Ce qui suit est un bref résumé des événements qui ont eu lieu.

Élargissement de l'équipe​

Nous avons eu beaucoup d'expansion. Le projet TART compte trois équipes

Rhodes : Sonia, Rickus, Stanley, Oleg, Patrice

• SARAO : Ben, Oleg, Ruby, Nadeem
• Stellenbosch : Rikus, Danie
• Nouvelle-Zélande : Tim, Phill, Max

Rickus (*) devient membre honoraire de l'équipe de Rhodes pour avoir conduit de Stellenbosch à Rhodes pour aider à l'installation.

Mises à jour du TART-3​

L'équipe néo-zélandaise a travaillé dur sur TART-3. Les progrès s'accélèrent maintenant car le module radio est maintenant en phase de test préliminaire.

Module radio TART-3 | Fonctionnalités :-------------------------:|:--------------------- ---- : | Deux radios par module, connecteur PCI-e, modules faciles à remplacer

Mise en service de Rhodes TART​

Couverture médiatique grâce à l'excellente organisation de l'équipe de Rhodes (Sonia, Rickus (hon), Stanley, Oleg, Patrice). Ce télescope était un interféromètre à 3 bras avec une nouvelle conception qui permet une reconfiguration facile.

L'équipe étudiante de Rhodes | Dignitaires :-------------------------:|:--------------------- ---- : |

Établir une nouvelle maison Github​

Nous avons commencé le processus de déplacement des référentiels github vers une nouvelle maison (https://github.com/tart-telescope). Cela implique également de diviser l'énorme référentiel TART monolithique en référentiels plus petits et plus gérables.

Mises à jour de la documentation​

• Nouveaux cahiers jupyter de Ruby (tart notebooks) ces cahiers vont être utilisés dans l'atelier inaugural TART qui se tiendra à Rhodes.
• Un nouveau site web basé sur Docosaurus (ici)

Mises à jour des ensembles de mesures​

Énorme travail de Ben Hugo sur la fabrication des outils de mesure TART tart2ms. Ceux-ci ont permis quelques fonctionnalités fantastiques :

• Rephasage des observations en un seul ensemble de mesures.
• Incorporation du catalogue en JSON dans l'ensemble de mesure.
• Cela permet une imagerie potentiellement beaucoup plus sensible !

Étalonnage CASA​

Étalonnage de Rhodes avec CASA | Phase cal vs temps :-------------------------:|:--------------------- ---- : |

Avancement des ateliers TART​

Trois ateliers TART sont maintenant à divers stades de préparation.

• 16-17 janvier : Écoutez Breakthrough @ Rhodes (Stanley, Ben, Oleg)
• Mi 2023 : Gabon (Patrice)
• Mi 2023 : Ghana (Stanley)

TART parle, mentionne dans les médias, etc.​

• Ouverture de Rhodes... (voir ci-dessus)
• Sonia : a donné une conférence au groupe RATT
• Patrice : présenté à l'African Astronomical Society (août ?)
• Stanley & Tim : Entretien au Kenya (8/12/22)