TART install in Botswana, March 2025

Another successful TART installation workshop was held at Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) in Palapye Botswana on March 17-21 2025. This marks the third successful installation of a TART telescope in an SKA African Partner nation, and followed two successful installations in Mauritius and Kenya in 2024. The workshop was presented by Prof Oleg Smirnov (Rhodes University, SARAO, South Africa), Dr Tim Molteno (University of Otago, New Zealand) and Dr Ben Hugo (SARAO, South Africa) with the local installation team led by Dr Fahmi Mokhupuki of BIUST.

The initiative to place TART telescopes in SKA African Partner nations was started in 2023 at the suggestion of Carla Mitchell-Sharpe, Africa Programme Manager at SARAO. The Botswana workshop was funded by SARAO, the DARA programme, and the Electronics Research Foundation.

This was the first installation of the TART-3 electronics, and the Botswana TART also included a modified spiral array structure built during the workshop by the BIUST team. The workshop consisted of four days of lectures in the mornings and practical sessions building the TART telescope in the afternoons. The TART-3 electronics have simplified the process of installing the electronics and will also allow the workshop attendees to spend more time engaging with the practical and theoretical aspects of operating a radio telescope. The lecture schedule included two public lectures which were attended by more than a hundred members of the university community and local high school students. After the lectures, there was a fascinating and wide-ranging question and answer session that covered topics from astrophysics in the kitchen to the detection of ghosts with radio telescopes.

BIUST students assembling the TART spiral array at the workshop.

BIUST students calibrating the antenna positions on the spiral antenna array.

Dr Tim Molteno of the University of Otago with high-school students touring the completed TART telescope.

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 the DARA project for supporting the accomodation in Palapye for the entire TART team, and to SARAO for contributing towards the cost of hardware as well as travel and staff time (Ben Hugo).