Astronomical Observatories in Africa
Optical
SALT
The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is the largest (11 m in diameter) single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere. The construction of SALT has been completed and It is now in its commissioning phase. Funding is provided by a consortium of international partners from South Africa, the United States, Germany, Poland, India, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. SALT is located in Sutherland, where the major telescopes of the South African Astronomical Observatory are located.
SAAO 1.9m Telescope
The second largest telescope in Africa has 1.9 m mirror diameter. It was built in 1938-48 for the Radcliffe Observatory, Pretoria. It is now at Sutherland.
Kottamia Telescope
This is the largest (1.88 meter diameter) telescope in North and Central Africa, as well as in the Middle East. It is at Kottamia Observatory, which In the desert 75 km northeast of Helwan in Egypt. Although First Light occurred in May 1964, the telescope has been significantly upgraded.
UFS-Boyden Rockefeller
This 1.5 m telescope is located at Boyden Observatory in South Africa. Used extensively since the early 1930’s.
IRSF
The Infrared Survey Facility (IRSF) possesses a mirror of 1.4 m diameter. It is mainly used for a near-infrared survey of the southern celestial sphere. It was constructed by the Nisimura telescope company of Japan and is located in Sutherland.
Mahikeng Astronomical Telescope (MAT)
The MAT is a modern 40 cm telescope at the Mahikeng Astronomical Observatory of the North-West University (MAO). The telescope is computer controlled and capable of very accurate pointing. Stars brighter than 13 magnitude can easily be studied photometrically. This telescope is able to measure radial velocity of bright pulsating stars. The control PC is a mac pro powerful server, and the software is THESKYX programme of software Bisque. The MAT is housed in a fibreglass dome that was manufactured outside Durban and motorised and completed at the Instrument-makers of the North West University at Potchefstroom campus.
The latest telescope installed at MAO is Leitlho-kgolo (New MAT) which is a 20inch (50 cm) Planewave CDK20 telescope. Attached to this telescope is a wide-field SBIG ALUMA AC4040 CMOS camera with combined field of view of 30 arc min x 30 arc min.
The MONET Telescope
MOnitoring NEtwork of Telescopes (MONET) is a 1.2 m telescope owned by the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen in Germany. A large fraction of the observing time is available to schools
SAAO 1.0m Telescope
The mirror diameter is 1.0 m and it was built in 1964 and first housed in Cape Town. It is now at Sutherland and is also known as the Elizabeth Telescope.
The Alan Cousins Telescope
This is a 0.75 m Automatic Photometric Telescope, whichwas commissioned in mid-2000. In honor of his life and work, the telescope was named after Dr A.W.J.Cousins.
SAAO 0.75m Telescope
This was erected in 1974 at Sutherland.
McClean Refractor
With an aperture of 0.61 m it is the largest telescope at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Cape Town. It was built in 1897.
Hess Optical Telescope
A 0.6 m telescope at the Hess location in Namibia
SAAO 0.5m Telescope
It was built by Boller & Chivens in 1967 for the Republic Observatory, then moved to Sutherland in 1972.
YSTAR
Yonsei Survey Telescope for Astronomical Research (YSTAR) has a mirror diameter of 0.5 m.It is part ofThe Near Earth Space Survey (NESS) Korean telescope, which is located in Sutherland. Is primarily used for searching for near earth objects (asteroids) as well as galactic variable stars.
Dall-Kirkham Reflector
Has an aperture of 0.45 m. Located at SAAO in Cape Town. Erected in 1955.
Parks Telescope
Located at SAAO in CapeTown. Its aperture is 0.41 m. Erected in 1994.
Nishimura reflector
Located at Boyden Observatory on the outskirts of Bloemfrontein in South Africa. It aperture is 0.41 m.
Watcher Robotic reflector
This is a 0.41 m telescope at Boyden Observatory. It is managed by the University College Dublin in Ireland. Installation was completed in April 2006.
Alvin Clark Refractor
This history of the telescope goes all the way back to 1889. With an aperture of 0.33 m it was one of the first telescopes at Boyden Observatory. Although a research grade telescope, today it is mostly used for educational purposes.
Metcalf Photographic Triplet Refractor
It is the most historically important instrument at Boyden Observatory in South Africa. Its aperture is 0.25 m.
Coelostat Telescope
Is a solar telescope of 0.20 m aperture at Boyden Observatory. Currently, it is mostly used for educational purposes.
The BiSON Telescope
A small solar telescope, which is located in Sutherland. It is used to monitor low-degree solar oscillation modes and is operated by two British universities.
SuperWASP
It is the United Kingdom’s major facility for detecting extrasolar planets. Consists of an array of 8 cameras each with an aperture of 11.1 cm. Located in Sutherland..
KELT South Telescope
Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) as the name implies has an extremely small aperture (4.5 cm). It is designed to detect extrasolar planets orbiting bright stars (8<10). It is owned and operated by Vanderbilt University. It is located in Sutherland, South Africa.
MeerLICT Telescope
MeerLICHT – the Dutch translation for ‘more light’ – is an astronomical project which aims to provide a simultaneous, real-time optical view of the radio (transient) sky as observed by MeerKAT (see below), MeerLICHT is a fully robotic 0.65-m telescope with an instantaneous field of view matching that of MeerKAT (2.7 square degrees, approximately the equivalent of 9 full moons stacked together in a 3×3 grid). The core scientific objective of MeerLICHT is the study of astrophysical transients at multiple windows of the electromagnetic spectrum simultaneously. It is driven by the exploration of the transient radio Universe on the MeerKAT telescope, via the ThunderKAT MeerKAT large survey project.
Oukaïmeden observatory
The Oukaïmeden observatory is a university astronomical observatory in Morocco located in an area which rises to 2,750 meters above sea level in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, it hosts the remote 0.50m MOSS telescope that came into operation in October 2011 and the TRAPPIST–North telescope, which came online in 2016. Oukaimeden Observatory (OUCA) has made world-class discoveries and runs various projects and collaborations, including a remote 0.5m-class telescope (MOSS) for a survey of small solar system bodies, the 0.6m TRAPPIST-North telescope for the detection of transiting planets, and the 0.5m wide-field telescope (OWL-Net) for space debris and near-Earth objects. Up to now Oukaimeden Observatory host 5 coupoles and several other instruments (spectrograph Eshel with 40cm Telescope, Space Weather instruments, fireball survey, …).
Radio
HartRAO 26m
Located at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory in South Africa, 50 Km west of Johannesburg.
HartRAO XDM
15m Experimental Demonstrator Model originally build as a technology demonstrator for the SKA precursor MeerKAT.
KAT-7
A radio telescope, which consist of seven dishes. They are the first seven antennas of the full MeerKAT array and are located in the Northern Cape of South Africa. MeerKAT is a technology demonstrator for Africa’s bid to host the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). SKA will consist of 3,000 dishes and extend 3,000 km. Australia and Africa are vying to host it. KAT-7 is primarily an engineering test-bed for MeerKAT, but it will also be capable of scientific observations. In April 2010 four of the seven dishes were linked together to produce its first interferometric image of an astronomical object.
MeerKAT
MeerKAT is an extension of KAT-7, both in terms of technology and number of dishes. MeerKAT is a precursor for the SKA-mid array, and is a pathfinder for SKA-mid technologies and science. It comprises 64 offset Gregorian antennas, each 13,5m in diameter, equipped with cryogenic L-band and UHF-band receivers. The antennas have positions for four receivers, and one of the two vacant positions will be filled by S-band receivers provided by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR). The array configuration is core-dominated with 61% of the antennas located within a 1 km diameter circle, and the remaining 39% distributed out to a radius of 4 km.
Indlebe
5 meter parabolic reflector at the Durban University of Technology in South Africa
Mauritius Radio Telescope
The Mauritius Radio Telescope (MRT) located in Mauritius is a 2 km by 1 km T-array of helical antennas. It was inaugurated in 1992 following joint efforts of the Raman Research Institute, India and the University of Mauritius. The primary aim was to survey the southern radio sky at 150 MHz to complement the Cambridge 150 MHz Northern Sky surveys. MRT has also been used to observe Pulsars.
Nigeria is constructing a 25 m radio telescope that will be operational by 2012. The telescope will operate in the 1.2-25 cm range and be part of the global VLBI network. Plans for scientific investigations include radio-timing of young to middle-aged pulsars, radio-spectroscopy on molecular clouds, and to study radio pulsars, to do radio-spectroscopy, and various studies in planetary and solar science.
Ghana Radio Observatory
Located at Kuntunse, a suburb 25km west of Accra, the Ghana Radio Astronomy Observatory consists of a 32 meter, converted and refurbished telescope from a disused satellite communication Earth station antenna. Its operational frequencies are 5 GHz (124 MHz) and 6.7 GHz (370 MHz). Its azimuth range is 8-327 deg, elevation range 5-90 deg, slew rate 0.27-0.29 deg/sec, and angular resolution at 6.7 GHz is 6 arcmin (0.1 deg). Ghana’s location of 50 North of the Equator gives it a distinct advantage of viewing the entire plane of the Milky Way and nearly the whole sky better than any existing telescope.
Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes
H.E.S.S
Located near the Gamsberg mountain in Namibia, H.E.S.S investigates cosmic gamma rays in the 100 GeV to 100 TeV energy range