START

START — Starting the Transient Array Radio Telescope — is the CASSA project that brought TART to life at IUB: building, installing and commissioning the array on the ground. TART itself is an open-source, 24-element aperture-synthesis radio telescope developed by the Electronics Research Foundation (ERF) at the University of Otago, New Zealand — it watches the entire sky continuously, optimised to catch transient events and to serve as a testbed for new imaging algorithms. Sister arrays run in New Zealand, South Africa, Mauritius and Kenya.

START covered every step of standing the instrument up. The supporting infrastructure was fabricated at Fab Lab IUB; the radio receivers and antennas were acquired from ERF; and funding came from the Department of Physical Sciences (DPS), IUB. The 24-antenna array was assembled on the rooftop of the IUB Main Academic Building during Workshop 2 (CW2) in November 2025.

With the electronics kit integrated on site, the telescope reached first light later that month — making START Bangladesh’s first radio telescope and the country’s only aperture-synthesis radio array. The instrument it commissioned is now the TART facility.