In hindsight, the University of Otago physicist said he should have foreseen the problem with the acronym for his transient array radio telescope.
"The name was a joke initially, but it seems to have stuck," he said.
Dr Molteno recently returned from a workshop in Africa, where he was teaching people how to build and use his low-cost Tarts, which he and his students developed at the university.
He said most radio telescopes cost billions of dollars to build, but his Tart could be built for mere thousands.
"The South Africans are host to the world’s largest radio telescope and it cost billions.
"That’s the problem. It’s so precious and it has such a long queue of astronomers wanting to use it that you can’t do research with it."
So he had developed a much smaller and less expensive version that could be used by anybody.
It was hoped the affordability and accessibility of the telescope would build radio astronomy (studying celestial objects at radio frequencies) capacity in Africa, and allow a larger part of the sky to be accessed for the detection and monitoring of radio transient events.
The telescope also had a significant educational component because it allowed students to work on development of new algorithms that would enable the next generation of radio telescopes, he said.
Dr Molteno gathered with scientists and engineers from nine African countries, at Rhodes University, in Makhanda, to share knowledge in building his low-cost radio telescope.
Participants learned to assemble the instrument, get to understand the electronics and gain hands-on experience using the data acquired by a Tart.
A Tart is now being used at Rhodes University as both a training and research instrument.
Rhodes Tart project leader Dr Stanley Kuja said the instrument offered many exciting research opportunities in different areas, such as antenna design (including antenna arrays), calibration and imaging techniques, development of novel techniques for RFI monitoring, development and testing of state-of-the-art machine learning techniques using Tart data, electronic system design, EMC metrology and more.
South African Radio Astronomy Observatory research chair and Rhodes University Distinguished Prof Oleg Smirnov said many university departments around the world had put up small single-dish student telescopes, but nobody had been "audacious" enough to try to make a full-scale interferometer.
"Tim showed how to make one cheaply, using off-the-shelf parts.
"Following his lead, we had two students build a second-generation Tart at Rhodes in a few short months, on a minimal budget.
"This really proved to us that virtually anybody could construct one of their own, anywhere — making modern radio astronomy accessible to even the smallest university group.
"This makes it a great vehicle for building radio astronomy capacity on the African continent."
The vision is to establish an integrated Tart array across the continent that will allow for a larger part of the sky to be accessed for the detection and monitoring of radio transient events.
