Scientific partners

The astronomy community world wide will benefit from the AMT. That is why we work together with scientific partners on the science cases for the telescope as well as the technical aspects of the telescope.

• The EHT consortium. The Event Horizon Telescope is a mm- network of existing (and up-coming) mm-wavelength telescopes spread across several continents to form a virtual telescope the size of the Earth. The EHT consortium consist of the world’s leading institutions in this field of research and its scientific council is chaired by the AMT’s lead scientist, professor Falcke.
• Black Hole Cam. BHCam is a project funded through a “Synergy Grant” awarded by the European Research Council(ERC) to a team of European astrophysicists, in a partnership between our Radboud University Nijmegen (prof Falcke), the Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR, Bonn), and the Goethe University of Frankfurt, and in cooperation with the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM), the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE), the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), and the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik (MPE, Garching).
• The European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) are the owners of the SEST telescope. SEST has been decommissioned and is awaiting removal from the La Silla site in Chile. Both ESO and OSO have agreed to donate the SEST telescope to the AMT project;
• The University of Oxford is interested from an educational and scientific point of view, in particular in the EHT science, the single dish science and the connection the AMT can provide to the SKA and AVN projects in the larger African region;
• The “Institute de RadioAstronomy Millimétrique”, or IRAM, is involved in the plans for the upgrade of the SEST telescope, which is the type of telescope they are familiar with;
• The Max Planck Society is the owner of the top of the Gamsberg mountain in Namibia and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn is a partner in the EHT consortium and the BHCam project.
• The Namibian University of Science & Technology (NUST) has signed a statement of support for the AMT, and are interested in the technological education and the maintenance and support of the AMT project.