Thailand is building a radio telescope!

© Baan

The National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT) is building a new radio telescope, an 'updated' version of the 40-m Yebes telescope (IGN). The telescope will be located within the Huai Hongkhrai Royal Development and Study Centre (HHK), a nature reserve north of Chiang Mai which is part of the Thai King's domain. Besides the high-frequency Cassegrain-Nasmyth optics covering a frequency range 2 - 115 GHz, the new telescope will also have a low-frequency primary focus feed covering 330 MHz to 2 GHz. A collaboration with the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory may result in placing a VGOS telescope at the same site for geodetic observations.

The Thai research community currently has expertise in pulsar studies, and star formation studies using molecular lines and masers. The new telescope will be used as a stand-alone research instrument as well as a VLBI station together with EVN in Europe (and surroundings), KVN in Korea, JVA and VERA in Japan, CVN in China, and hopefully LBA in Australia.

An International Review Committee Meeting has been held in March at NARIT in Chiang Mai with members from befriended observatories in order to consider the design of the telescope and the plans for building the required instrumentation. Committee members came from OAN, NAOJ, SHAO, KASI, CSIRO, MPIfR, and also ASTRON. The accompanying photo shows the Review Committee around the 'hole in the ground' where the new telescope will be located.

In preparation for the future, a NARIT-Sokendai Winter School 2018 has been held in January with teachers from Australia, China, Germany, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, and The Netherlands. The students of the school came from Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Philippines.