The Transient Array Radio Telescope (TART) installations throughout the world have detected radio transients, although this is not its primary purpose.
The transients detected include bright flashes and other unknown sources in GPS band covered by existing receivers (although their are plans to introduce alternative frequencies in future versions of the receiver). All of these transients are in low Earth orbit due to limitations lf the antennas used in the system.
TART is a low-cost, open-source radio interferometer.
Its main goals are:
- Testing interferometry techniques.
- Producing all-sky radio images.
- Education and research.
- Detecting and characterising transient radio sources.
Transient detections with TART have included:
- Solar radio bursts during periods of solar activity. These are the easiest and most commonly observed transients.
- Bright radio flashes of unknown origin in low Earth orbit.
- Satellite transmissions and other human-made transient signals, which are useful for testing the system.
- Demonstrations showing that the array can detect brief changes in radio brightness, validating its transient detection capability.
As far as the published literature shows, TART has not reported discoveries of new deep space astronomical fast radio bursts (FRBs), pulsars, or other previously unknown cosmic radio transients. Its relatively small collecting area limits its sensitivity compared with dedicated professional transient instruments such as:
- Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)
- Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP)
- Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR)
TART is particularly interesting because its software pipeline includes transient imaging techniques that could potentially be adapted to larger amateur arrays. Although a single RTL-SDR with a dish is unlikely to detect most astronomical transients, an interferometric array using multiple coherent SDRs (such as an SDRplay RSPduo or several synchronized RTL-SDRs) could be used to experiment with transient detection methods.
The entire TART design and software is available open source on Github.