Major African radio telescope will help to image black holes
The Africa Millimetre Telescope will fill a gap in the coverage of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global network of telescopes that can receive and analyse radio waves of around 1 millimetre in length — in 2019 they published the first-ever image of a black hole’s edge, known as its event horizon
The telescope will be located on or near Table Mountain in the Gamsberg Nature Reserve in Namibia.
The project, confirmed at the end of last year, is “another step toward solidifying Africa’s position as a globally competitive and capable player in the field of astronomy”, says Charles Takalana, head of the secretariat at the African Astronomical Society in Cape Town, South Africa. The telescope will “fill a missing observing window on the continent” and will be crucial for Africa’s astrophysics communities, adds Roger Deane, who directs the Wits Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
