Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory
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The Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) is a radio astronomy observatory located in a natural bowl of hills at Hartebeesthoek just south of the Magaliesberg mountain range, Gauteng province, South Africa, about 50 km west of Johannesburg. It is a National Research Facility run by South Africa's National Research Foundation and is the only major radio astronomy observatory in Africa.
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[edit] History
The observatory was originally named Deep Space Station 51 and was built in 1961 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In this role the station assisted in tracking many unmanned United States space missions, including the Ranger, Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter spacecraft (which landed on the Moon or mapped it from orbit), the Mariner missions (which explored the planets Venus and Mars) and the Pioneer missions (which measured the Sun's winds).
NASA withdrew from the station in 1975, handing it over to South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), who converted to a radio astronomy observatory. In 1988 the observatory became a National Facility operated by the Foundation for Research Development (FRD); in 1999 the FRD was restructured as the National Research Foundation (NRF).
[edit] The Radio Telescope
The observatory is equipped with a single 260 ton radio telescope with a main reflecting surface diameter of 26 metres. The telescope is equipped with radio receivers operating in the microwave band at wavelengths of 18cm, 13cm, 6cm, 5cm, 4.5cm, 3.5cm and 2.5cm.
[edit] Research
HartRAO is mainly used for continuum radiometry, spectroscopy, pulsar timing and interferometry but also works together with radio telescopes on other continents as well as the orbiting radio telescope HALCA in order to perform Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI).
MeerKAT, a one-dish prototype, to test the feasibility of the final project, has been constructed at Hartebeesthoek. KAT-7, a seven-dish engineering testbed and science instrument near Carnarvon in the Northern Cape Province, will be operational in 2009. This will be followed by an array of 50 or more dishes on the same site, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), operational by 2012, and linked to a high-speed data transfer network at a remote operations facility. The C-Bass Experiment to be constructed on the same site, is a niche project resulting from a collaboration between HartRAO and the universities of Caltech, Oxford , Manchester and Rhodes .
The observatory is an associate member of the European VLBI Network, but also operates with the Australia Telescope Long Baseline Array, the Asia-Pacific Telescope, the United States Very Long Baseline Array and the Global Array.
HartRAO also runs a Space Geodesy programme using VLBI, Satellite laser ranging and the Global Positioning System.
The observatory also provides students and lecturers from South African universities the facilities and opportunities to perform research.
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