Publications
Partners
Cape Town - Increased interest in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project in the Karoo has led to an investment of $9.5m by the University of California at Berkeley.
The investment will be used to increase the number of radio dishes of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation Array (Hera) telescope from 19 to 220. The Hera has 14-metre radio dishes and is located at the Losberg site near Carnarvon in the Northern Cape, a few kilometres from the MeerKAT, which currently has 64 dishes.
Thanks to the investment the Hera will become the most sensitive radio telescope in the world. MeerKAT and Hera are both precursors to the SKA telescope. With the new Hera radio dishes scientists will be able to detect signs of the first stars and galaxies ever to have been created.
The project is led by the University of California at Berkeley, in collaboration with partner teams from the US, UK, Italy and South Africa.
Kathryn Rosie, project engineer of the Hera telescope, said that it is a truly Karoo-based instrument.
“Construction materials are sourced and fabricated from within South Africa – predominantly from the Carnarvon area. Because the bulk materials of construction are light industry materials such as wood and PVC pipe, there is opportunity for local businesses - which don't necessarily have a ‘high technology’ customer base - to be a part of this awesome science instrument," said Rosie.
"We have local contractors installing our main support poles, cutting our structural elements to size and making up our reflector surface panels from bulk supplied material."
The Hera telescope has a minimalist design and each antenna will point in a fixed direction.
Dr Rob Adam, SKA South Africa managing director, said it shows that the site selection in the Karoo) for SKA South Africa was of such a good standard that they are attracting more international funding to South Africa. The site is a host for other scientific instruments too.
“MeerKAT will study evolved galaxies in the later Universe, while Hera will peer back nearer to the dawn of time, when the first stars and galaxies were being formed. In this way they address complementary scientific questions,” said Adam.
Dr Fernando Camilo, the SKA’s South Africa chief scientist, further explained that the much more sensitive Hera, "operating in the Karoo with minimal man-made radio interference", will explore the billion-year period after hydrogen gas collapsed into the first galaxies - a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
The new radio dishes will increase the chances that signs of the first stars and galaxies ever to be created will soon be detected in the Northern Cape.
Dr Gianni Bernardi the SKA South Africa's senior astronomer, said: "Hera – which operates at low radio frequency – has enough sensitivity to detect cosmic reionisation and we hope to map it very precisely by statistically measuring how the fraction of neutral hydrogen changed with cosmic time. Hera has the potential to transform our knowledge in one of the main SKA science areas."
Read Fin24's top stories trending on Twitter: Fin24’s top stories
