The Rhodes Centre for Radio Astronomy Techniques & Technologies (RATT) was established in 2012 around the new SKA Research Chair in RATT awarded to Rhodes. RATT's mission is to conduct world-class research into novel radio astronomy calibration, imaging, data analysis algorithms, software and techniques that are urgently required by the next generation of radio telescopes such as MeerKAT and the SKA, and by the science that they are designed to deliver.
With the decision of the SKA Organization to build a large part of the SKA in South Africa, South African radio astronomy is entering a new era. Techniques and technologies are becoming more important then ever -- the current thinking is that for the SKA to be feasible at all from a computational standpoint, we must rely not only on Moore's Law holding out, but also on more or less annual algorithmic breakthroughs. It is up to groups like RATT to deliver such breakthroughs.
With the decision of the SKA Organization to build a large part of the SKA in South Africa, South African radio astronomy is entering a new era. Techniques and technologies are becoming more important then ever -- the current thinking is that for the SKA to be feasible at all from a computational standpoint, we must rely not only on Moore's Law holding out, but also on more or less annual algorithmic breakthroughs. It is up to groups like RATT to deliver such breakthroughs.
Research directions
As in many other sciences, the balance between theoretical and instrumental radio astronomy has tended to evolve in cycles. The previous great instrumental revolution, prompted by the invention of the selfcal algorithm in the early 1980s, led to a blossoming of techniques, and the emergence of popular data reduction packages such as AIPS and Miriad. These have proven to be so capable that radio astronomy has lived off that success for the next two decades, with further practical advances being incremental rather than revolutionary.
Over the past several years, the demand for radical new techniques has grown sharply, with a "glut" of new-generation radio telescopes (ALMA, LOFAR, MeerKAT, PAPER, MWA, ASKAP) being built with a few years of one another, coupled with significant upgrades to older observatories (EVLA, e-MERLIN, Apertif), and with the SKA itself looming large on the horizon. Novel telescopes present new instrumental problems, which the techniques of the 80s can no longer address. Fortunately, developments such as the Measurement Equation have given us a rigorous mathematical framework for tackling such problems, with new software (e.g. MeqTrees) being developed to take advantage of this. The wheel has turned, and we have quietly entered another instrumental revolution.
Thanks to this, there's no shortage of new, interesting and extremely challenging research projects to work on. Here are some example RATT Research Projects for 2020.
Over the past several years, the demand for radical new techniques has grown sharply, with a "glut" of new-generation radio telescopes (ALMA, LOFAR, MeerKAT, PAPER, MWA, ASKAP) being built with a few years of one another, coupled with significant upgrades to older observatories (EVLA, e-MERLIN, Apertif), and with the SKA itself looming large on the horizon. Novel telescopes present new instrumental problems, which the techniques of the 80s can no longer address. Fortunately, developments such as the Measurement Equation have given us a rigorous mathematical framework for tackling such problems, with new software (e.g. MeqTrees) being developed to take advantage of this. The wheel has turned, and we have quietly entered another instrumental revolution.
Thanks to this, there's no shortage of new, interesting and extremely challenging research projects to work on. Here are some example RATT Research Projects for 2020.