ASTRONOMY
Old dish gives Ghana a new taste of the African sky
African countries turn to radio astronomy as a way to develop high-technology skills and attract scientists
The small observatory building smells of fresh paint and above it tower four storeys of hulking white metal. Its receiving dish 32m across, this telescope is the centrepiece of the Ghana Radio Astronomy Observatory. The instrument, about an hour’s drive from Accra, will soon connect up with telescopes around the world. African countries, with no small amount of urging from SA, have turned to radio astronomy as a way to develop high-technology skills and attract scientists. Ghana’s dish was once used for telecommunications, but spent years collecting rust and birds’ nests. The laying of undersea cables down Africa’s coasts rendered such dishes, once a key communications tool, redundant. But the late Mike Gaylard, a South African radio astronomer, had an idea: what if the obsolete dishes could be converted into a network of radio telescopes that spanned the continent? Thus the concept of the African VLBI Network was born. VLBI — very long-baseline interferometry — is a type of astrono...
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