Radio Astronomical Antennas in the Central African Region to Improve the Sampling Function of the VLBI Network in the SKA Era?

Marcellin Atemkeng; Patrice Okouma; Eric Maina; Roger Ianjamasimanana; Serges Zambou

doi:10.3390/s22218466

Radio Astronomical Antennas in the Central African Region to Improve the Sampling Function of the VLBI Network in the SKA Era?

Sensors (Basel). 2022 Nov 3;22(21):8466. doi: 10.3390/s22218466.

Authors

Marcellin Atemkeng¹, Patrice Okouma^{1

2}, Eric Maina³, Roger Ianjamasimanana⁴, Serges Zambou⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mathematics, Rhodes University, Artillery Rd, Grahamstown 6139, South Africa.
² Gabon Space Agency, Libreville P.O. Box 3850, Gabon.
³ Department of Physics and Electronics, Rhodes University, Grahamstown 6139, South Africa.
⁴ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC), Glorieta de la Astronomía, E-18008 Granada, Spain.
⁵ Semiconductor Development Division, Beneq Oy, Olarinluoma 9, 02200 Espoo, Finland.

Abstract

On the African continent, South Africa has world-class astronomical facilities for advanced radio astronomy research. With the advent of the Square Kilometre Array project in South Africa (SA SKA), six countries in Africa (SA SKA partner countries) have joined South Africa to contribute towards the African Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) Network (AVN). Each of the AVN countries aims to construct a single-dish radio telescope that will be part of the AVN, the European VLBI Network, and the global VLBI network. The SKA and the AVN will enable very high sensitivity VLBI in the southern hemisphere. In the current AVN, there is a gap in the coverage in the central African region. This work analyses the increased scientific impact of having additional antennas in each of the six countries in central Africa, i.e., Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, and the Central African Republic. A number of economic human capital impacts of having a radio interferometer in central Africa are also discussed. This work also discusses the recent progress on the AVN project and shares a few lessons from some past successes in ground stations retrofitting.

Keywords: radio astronomy; radio interferometer; square kilometre array; very long baseline interferometry.

MeSH terms

Astronomy*
Cameroon
Central African Republic
Congo
Humans
Interferometry*

Grants and funding

This work is based upon research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation. The MeerKAT telescope is operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is a facility of the National Research Foundation, an agency of the Department of Science and Innovation.R.I. receives financial support from grant RTI2018-096228-B-C31 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER,UE), and from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” awarded to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), from the grant IAA4SKA (Ref. R18-RT-3082) from the Economic Transformation, Industry, Knowledge and Universities Council of the Regional Government of Andalusia and the European Regional Development Fund from the European Union.