| The Zulu phrase 'indlebe zikhany' ilanga' literally means those whose ears glow in the sun. This phrase gave rise to the project name Indlebe, which means ear. |
The year 2009 was the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first look at the night sky through a telescope and was declared as the International Year of Astronomy (IYA) by a resolution from the United Nations.
In 2006 the Department of Electronic Engineering at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) embarked on an ambitious project to design, construct and test a radio telescope operating at the Hydrogen Line frequency of 1420MHz with the intention of having a fully functional radio telescope operational on the campus by 2009 to coincide with the IYA.
The aims of the project are:
The project is partially funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and falls under the DUT niche research area of Systems Research.
The Durban University of Technology is located in the city of Durban, on the east coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
Latitude 29:51:11.5° S, longitude 31:00:12.3° E.
| February 2006 | Project initiated |
| April 2006 | First MTech student registered |
| December 2006 | NRF Research Grant funding secured |
| January 2007 | Visit to HartRAO by staff and students |
| May 2007 | Second MTech student registered |
| July 2007 | Three BTech student projects registered |
| August 2007 | Parabolic reflector installed (photo gallery) |
| September 2007 | Indlebe website activated |
| September 2007 | Indlebe project recognised as a resource by the IYA |
| September 2007 | Paper presented at SAIEE Africon 2007 |
| October 2007 | Receiver prototype completed |
| December 2007 | Visit to Indlebe facility by HartRAO/SKA/KAT team (photo gallery) |
| April 2008 | Presentation at SA AMSAT Space Symposium, UKZN |
| 28 July 2008 | First Light - Sagittarius A |
| September 2008 | Articles published in Engineer IT, Canopus, Position IT |
| September 2008 | Presentation to Durban branch of ASSA and IYA 2009 outreach workshop |
| May 2009 | Handover of donation of Adroit SCADA software package (photo gallery) |
| June 2009 | Visit to HartRAO by the first group of students recruited for the SKA SA program (photo gallery) |
| June 2009 | Two new MTech projects and four BTech projects registered |
| June 2009 | First calibrated results obtained of Vela X and Centaurus A |
| July 2009 | Publication in South African Instrumentation and Control |
| July 2009 | Publication in Position-IT |
| 21 October 2009 | Visit from the Minister of Science and Technology |
| 23 November 2009 | Two papers presented at the SAASTEC conference in Sutherland |
| 17 April 2010 | Presentation at SA AMSAT Space Symposium, UKZN |
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