Submitted by Pooja Pandey on Wed, 13/07/2022 - 09:37
The University of Cambridge is one of the seven international institutions, outside of South Africa, that collaborated on the international project – HERA, Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array. HERA, is an international astronomy infrastructure, a radio telescope dedicated to observing how the first structures formed in the very early stages of the universe, as the first stars and galaxies lit up space.
Our participation in HERA has been and continues to be a wonderful 2-way enrichment process. On one hand, we have provided to the project our deep insight on the instrument design, gained over years of work on the SKA telescope development. This is now translating on the first high impact scientific results. Conversely our researchers have gained a wealth of hands-on expertise on a project that has a much shorter timeline than SKA and is already observing and feeding fundamental information to the cosmology community. Dr. Eloy de Lera Acedo
As per an impact study from SARAO, The University of Cambridge has been involved with the project in multiple ways.
UK has contributed about 5% towards the total cost of HERA, which has primarily come through the funding received from the University of Cambridge and the UK Newton Fund. The other involvement of University of Cambridge has been through the Cavendish Astrophysics research engagement, where 4 doctoral students are affiliated to the research on a HERA topic. This forms the largest number of doctoral students undertaking research on a HERA topic from any institution.
The university’s involvement with the project, along with that of other institutions, has made a difference to the local community as well as nationally in South Africa.
Starting construction in 2015, the HERA infrastructure reached completion in 2021. Local human capital and material sourced from local suppliers directly contributed to the local development through employment creation, in Carnarvon, Northern Cape.
Nationally, the development of HERA project has also boosted participation of South African researchers in the HERA collaboration. This has been made possible through the continuous financial support towards masters and doctoral scholarships. The increased participation of researchers based at local universities will ensure South Africa’s representation in world-class research.
“Our participation in HERA has been and continues to be a wonderful 2-way enrichment process. On one hand, we have provided to the project our deep insight on the instrument design, gained over years of work on the SKA telescope development. This is now translating on the first high impact scientific results. Conversely our researchers have gained a wealth of hands-on expertise on a project that has a much shorter timeline than SKA and is already observing and feeding fundamental information to the cosmology community.” shares Dr. Eloy de Lera Acedo, involved in the project from Cavendish Astrophysics at Cambridge.
“On the other hand, Cavendish Astrophysics researchers have been able to participate in a multitude of field trips to the Karoo radio reserve in South Africa to work on the construction and commissioning of the radio telescope. This has allowed us to meet, work with, collaborate and learn from the local expertise and people, and hopefully we have contributed to the local development as well.
This relation is far from finished with HERA, since the local connections we have established over years of work on site are now proving fundamental for the development of our very own REACH radio telescope, scheduled to start observations in the Karoo during the later part of 2022.”
References:
1https://www.sarao.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Hera-Digital-LR-1.pdf
2https://www.astro.phy.cam.ac.uk/research/research-projects/reach
Image: The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array in the Northern Cape.
Image credit: SARAO