uranology require expensive things , and lots of them . You might remember that uranologist almost literallyturned the Earthinto a telescope just to see a fateful hole , by combining lot of existing wireless scope dishes .
https://gizmodo.com/scientists-are-turning-earth-into-a-telescope-to-see-a-1793019946
There are telescope in all sorts of places — Hawaii , the desolate Chilean desert , heck , there ’s even one at the South Pole . But Africa ’s get mint of quondam telecommunication bag poised to serve a new purpose . And now , one of those dishes in Ghana is being turned into the first African wireless telescope outside South Africa . Naturereports :
The scope , in Kuntunse near Accra , is the first of an raiment of such instruments expected to be build up across Africa over the next five years , and make part of long - term plans to develop the skills of stargazer on the continent . It made its first observance this yr and will be officially opened later in 2017 .
The story began with a Google Maps search for argufy telecommunication dishes a few years ago , which at long last get South African scientist Michael Gaylard to the Ghana dishful . Gaylard has since passed away , but now scientists are retrofit the thing , which has n’t been loose . scope are usually built to spec , but this metre around engineer have call for to fit their plans around what they ’ve get . Electricity , and a reliable cyberspace connection , have been scratchy as well .
Africa offer a in effect location for Very Long Baseline Interferometry — combining pile of telescopic data take at the same time — peculiarly if scientist want to take a movie of the black pickle at the center of our Milky Way galaxy . Dan Marrone , experimental astrophysicist at the University of Arizona , previously told me that our galactic shopping mall lie in the south of the supernal equator . That means radio scope sites further northerly , like those in Europe , see it quite scurvy on the sensible horizon — post like Ghana , Zambia , Kenya and Madagascar have a much better panorama . Of course , scientists at these localization may want to do astronomy on their own , outside of VLBI .
Funding has get from South Africa , agree to the Nature report , whose Square Kilometer Array lab hope to do good from more cup of tea on the continent . The SKA will lie of a square kilometer ’s worth of dishes distribute across Australia and South Africa to do high - resolve tuner uranology . The African Renaissance and International Co - Operation Fund has also given around $ 9 million to the task so far . Ghanan stargazer will be able to habituate the experiment to look at any radio set waving origin , like pulsars .
So , here ’s to looking at space , minor .
[ Nature ]
AfricaAstronomyScience
Daily Newsletter
Get the full technical school , science , and culture news in your inbox daily .
News from the futurity , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
