Research · Facilities
STAR Telescope
Small Transient Array Radio Telescope — CASSA's radio instrument at IUB CORE, designed and built by Shoaib Mirza as the foundation of CASSA's radio observation capability.
Radio Telescope
About the STAR Telescope
The STAR Telescope — Small Transient Array Radio Telescope — is CASSA's radio instrument, housed at IUB CORE on the rooftop of the Main Academic Building. Designed and built by CASSA Technical Affiliate Shoaib Mirza, the STAR Telescope is a localized build of the open-source TART (Transient Array Radio Telescope), giving CASSA its own radio observation capability for the first time in Bangladesh. The instrument is operated by CASSA and feeds into the RAIN research area's instrumentation programme.
Full Name
Small Transient Array Radio Telescope
Location
IUB CORE, Main Academic Building rooftop, IUB Bashundhara
Instrument
CASSA's primary radio instrument
Designer
Shoaib Mirza (Technical Affiliate, CASSA)
Science
What the STAR Telescope observes
Science Capabilities
Radio science with the STAR Telescope
The STAR Telescope is the foundation of CASSA's in-house radio observation programme. As part of the RAIN (Radio Astronomy Instrumentation) research area, the telescope serves as a testbed for developing calibration workflows, primary beam characterisation pipelines, and data reduction methods that are directly applicable to larger arrays including LOFAR and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
Transient Detection
Monitoring and detection of radio transient phenomena
Pipeline Development
Development and testing of radio interferometry reduction pipelines for the RAIN research area
Calibration Research
Primary beam characterisation and calibration workflows applicable to international arrays
Student Training
Hands-on radio astronomy training for CASSA student researchers
Historical note
The STAR Telescope is CASSA's build of the open-source TART (Transient Array Radio Telescope), adapted by Shoaib Mirza. MATRiX (Multiwavelength Astronomy Techniques: Radio and X-ray) — the former research group centred on this instrumentation — has been renamed RAIN (Radio Astronomy Instrumentation) to better reflect CASSA's evolving focus on array design, pipeline development, and multi-telescope coordination.