Supporting radio astronomy in Ghana

© Ross Burns

Young radio astronomy trainees contribute to activities of the recently converted radio telescope in Kuntuse, Ghana. The station was acquired from a telecommunications company after it fell into disuse. It is now refurbished for use as a radio telescope to form part of the African VLBI Network (AVN), and occasionally joins EVN test observations. Another desired outcome of the conversion is to invigorate the radio astronomy community in Africa in preparation for the SKA.

In order to promote local skills - further support was provided in the way of a radio astronomy training course, organised as part of the JUNPINGJIVE (NL) and DARA (UK) projects. Trainees were guided through a wide variety of topics including technical operations: hardware and software, principles of radio astronomy and interferometry, scheduling and observing VLBI experiments, programming and data reduction, and the science that can be done when combining these techniques.

Over the three week course the classes and exercises were met with enthusiasm from the trainees who were keen to further their skills at summer schools and workshops around the world. Keep an eye out for these JUMPINGJIVE and DARA trainees when reading applications and proposals~