Speaker
Description
Over the past decade, Ghana has emerged as a pivotal player in Africa’s evolving radio astronomy landscape. The conversion of a decommissioned 32-metre telecommunications antenna into the Ghana Radio Astronomy Observatory (GRAO) exemplifies a national strategy that blends infrastructure reuse, scientific capacity building, and grassroots outreach. As one of the first cohort of locally trained astronomers pursuing an Mphil in Astronomy funded through the DARA initiative, the author builds on national capacity-building efforts and the availability of Table Top Radio Telescopes (TTRTs) distributed across Ghanaian institutions.
This MPhil research investigates the development of a low-cost radio interferometer using existing and readily available radio telescopes, with a specific focus on the Table Top Radio Telescope (TTRT) deployed in Ghana through the Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy (DARA) initiative. To understand the current state of experimental radio astronomy instrumentation and educational arrays, a systematic literature review was conducted following the PRISMA 2020 framework. The search identified 78 records, from which 55 studies and technical reports met the eligibility criteria. The literature consistently highlights that hands-on, low-cost systems such as the TTRT and Transient Array Radio Telescope (TART) significantly enhance conceptual understanding, engineering competence, and student engagement, especially in emerging radio astronomy communities .
This project models and tests an interferometric system based on multiple TTRT units. The methodology includes beam simulation of a single TTRT horn antenna, fringe-pattern modelling for various baselines, exploratory signal analysis, and software correlation of observational data using open-source tools. Pilot observations of the Galactic H I line and strong continuum sources (e.g., the Sun or Jupiter) will be used to validate the system’s performance.
The expected outcome is a low-cost, replicable interferometer design suitable for Ghanaian and African institutions, supporting long-term capacity development in radio astronomy and instrumentation.
| Stream | Science or Engineering |
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