Research · Facilities
TART
Transient Array Radio Telescope — CASSA's radio instrument at IUB CORE, and Bangladesh's first radio telescope. A 24-antenna array built at IUB and the only TART in the Northern Hemisphere.
Radio Telescope
About TART
TART — the Transient Array Radio Telescope — is CASSA's radio instrument, housed at IUB CORE on the rooftop of the Main Academic Building. A 24-antenna build of the open-source TART design, it gave Bangladesh its first radio telescope and is the only TART in the Northern Hemisphere. It first detected radio signals from space on 18 November 2025, and is operated by CASSA as part of the RAIN (Radio Astronomy Instrumentation) research area.
Full Name
Transient Array Radio Telescope (TART)
Location
IUB CORE, Main Academic Building rooftop, IUB Bashundhara
Array
24 antennas, ~10 ft across, full-sky image every minute
Built by
Shoaib Mirza (Technical Affiliate, CASSA), at the IUB Fab Lab
How it was built
Fabricated at IUB, assembled at Workshop 2
The build
Made in Bangladesh
The telescope's array structure was designed and fabricated at the IUB Fabrication Laboratory (Fab Lab) by CASSA Technical Affiliate Shoaib Mirza, with help from students Yusa Islam and Md. Shahadat Hossain Shahal. The electronics were imported from New Zealand, the home of the open-source TART project.
After more than six months of work — held up for a time by electronic complications — the instrument was finally assembled and brought online during CASSA Workshop 2, "Installing a Radio Telescope to Image the Invisible" (17–21 November 2025). It detected its first radio signals on 18 November 2025, under the supervision of Dr. Tim Molteno of the University of Otago, New Zealand, who brought the final electronic components that completed the build. Thirty students from eleven universities took part in the hands-on assembly.
Read the full story: IUB launches Bangladesh's first TART →
Array structure
Designed & fabricated at the IUB Fab Lab by Shoaib Mirza, with students Yusa Islam and Md. Shahadat Hossain Shahal
Electronics
Imported from New Zealand, home of the open-source TART project
Assembly
Brought online during CASSA Workshop 2 (17–21 Nov 2025); first signals 18 Nov 2025
Science
What TART observes
Science Capabilities
Radio science with TART
TART 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). Its full-sky images, captured every minute, are shared live across the global TART network.
Transient Detection
Monitoring and detection of radio transient phenomena, including cosmic rays
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
Network & history
TART is part of a global network of low-cost array telescopes — with siblings in Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, Namibia, Mauritius, South Africa and New Zealand — that share data and full-sky imagery. 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.