TART at G20 ministerial, September 2025
A TART telescope featuring the latest spiral kitset was put on display by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SRAO) at a G20 ministerial meeting at the MeerKAT SKA site near Carnavon in South Africa. The Transient Array Radio Telescope (TART) is an open source radio telescope.
The initiative to place TART telescopes in SKA African Partner nations was started in 2023 and is a joint effort of the University of Otago, Rhodes University, the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), the DARA programme and the Electronics Research Foundation.
SARAO hosted Tim Molteno, and Oleg Smirnov of the TART team (assisted by Ntsikilelo Charles) who assembled an array in the exhibition hall. Tim and Ntsikilelo even managed a tour of the MeerKAT radio telescope with the press team. The TART telescope was being exhibited at the G20 ministerial meeting as part of an effort to showcase SARAO's africa programme. which has supported the installation of TART telescope in the SKA African Partner Nations (Mauritius, Botswana, Kenya, Zambia, Ghana, Namibia, Madagascar and Mozambique).
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| TART team members Dr Tim Molteno and Prof Oleg Smirnov, ably assisted by Dr Ntsikilelo Charles of SARAO, in the Assembly shed at the SKA-Mid facility in the Karoo desert of South Africa. |
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| The TART spiral array centre showing the logos of the supporting organizations. |
Originally developed by Dr Tim Molteno, and students at the University of Otago's Department of Physics. The TART is a radio-telescope with the capability to observe the entire sky continuously and optimized to detect satellites, near-earth objects and transient events including high-energy cosmic rays. The telescope is also designed to serve as a platform for the development of new imaging algorithms.
Acknowledgements
The TART team would like to thank the University of Otago for support with staff time and hardware, Rhodes University for supporting travel and staff time. We're also extremely grateful to EMSS Antennas for coordinating the production of the array structure, and to SARAO for hosting the TART team at the G20 meeting.