South Africa is promoting the development of a network of radio telescopes across Africa, SKA South Africa Director Dr Bernie Fanaroff revealed on Tuesday.

In origin, this is an outgrowth of the cooperation between South Africa and eight other African countries regarding this country’s bid to host the €1,5-billion international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, in terms of which a number of SKA outstations would be sited in these countries, in addition to the core and other outstations which would be located in South Africa.




“We’re looking at building dishes in the African countries that we are cooperating with in the SKA project,” he said. “We’re already working with Mozambique.”

In addition, SKA South Africa is looking at converting large (about 30 m in diameter) satellite telecommunications dishes, rendered obsolete by advances in telecommunications technology, and found in many African countries, into radio telescopes.




“We’re seeking to persuade [African] governments and [telecommunications] companies to transfer these to science,” he reported. “We need some co-investment as we can’t fund it all ourselves.”

The idea is to link all these telescopes together, and to radio telescopes in South Africa, forming what Fanaroff called the African Array. This, in turn, would be connected to radio telescopes and arrays in Europe and elsewhere in the world.

The African Array would be used for Long Baseline and Very Long Baseline Interferometry observations. The project would also serve to stimulate astronomy in the participating countries and to help develop skills in electronics and information and communications technologies.

Although the project has been launched with South Africa’s African SKA partner countries – Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia – it is not restricted to them. Fanaroff reported that increasing interest in the African Array project is emerging in North Africa.

Concerning the decision on where to site the SKA – the alternative location is Australia – the SKA’s international site selection group should make a recommendation in November.

The SKA Council is then expected to make the final decision in May 2012.

Intriguingly, however, Fanaroff revealed that there is “a lot of talk in the corridors” at international SKA gatherings of splitting the hosting of the instrument – putting part of it in South Africa and part in Australia, in what is being referred to as the “win-win” scenario.

However, as yet there is “nothing official” about this proposal.

