Square Kilometre Array: The radio telescope of the XXI century (original) (raw)
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" The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) " is the largest radio telescope being developed in South Africa/Australia and planned to be operational by 2024. SKA will consist of millions of coherently connected antennas spread over an area of about 3000 km in extent with a total collecting area of approximately one square km. SKA will collect and decipher a deluge of radio signals from deep outer space to help us better understand the evolution of the universe and the nature of the matter. In this paper we provide an introduction to the SKA science project, its basic objectives, the engineering challenges it entails and why SKA is being touted as an ultimate big data challenge.
2009 Applied Electromagnetics Conference (AEMC), 2009
The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is a radio telescope, which will have a total collecting area of approximately one square kilometer. It will operate over a wide range of frequencies and its size will make it 50 times more sensitive than any other radio instrument. By utilizing advanced processing technology, it will be able to survey the sky more than ten thousand times faster than ever before. With receiving stations extending out to distance of 3,000 km from a concentrated central core, it will continue radio astronomy's tradition of providing the highest resolution images in all astronomy. The SKA will be built in a country, most likely in the southern hemisphere where the view of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is best and radio interference least. The SKA will be a highly flexible instrument designed to address a wide range of questions in astrophysics, fundamental physics, cosmology and particle astrophysics. It will be able to probe previously unexplored parts of the distant Universe. Some of the key science projects will include: Extreme tests of General Relativity; Galaxies, Cosmology, Dark Matter and Dark Energy; Probing the Dark Ages-the first black The Origin and Evolution of Cosmic Magnetism holes and stars; The Origin and Evolution of Cosmic Magnetism; and, Exploration of the Unknown.
The world's scientific community is building the largest radio telescope ever imagined, with a total collection area of one square kilometre, i.e. a million square meters. This represents a huge technological advance, huge investment, and even greater opportunities. The radio astronomers will be able to monitor the sky with unprecedented detail, sensitivity and speed, aiming to answer several fundamental questions, and creating a wide range of new technological solutions. The magnitude of this project also implies an immensely challenging task: establishing the bridges between society, political and scientific communities. SKA outreach requires the creation of innovative dissemination materials that portrait the instrument from very different perspectives, highlighting its importance to the multiple targets that its technologies address spills to. In this work we explore how concepts are exploited, creating an inspiring sci-fi vision, mostly resorting of video and 3D animations.
An Overview of the Square Kilometre Array
2013
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the premier instrument to study radiation at centimetre and metre wavelengths from the cosmos, and in particular hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe. The SKA will probe the dawn of galaxy formation as well as allow advances in many other areas of astronomy, such as fundamental physics, astrobiology and cosmology. Phase 1, which will be about 10% of the full SKA collecting area, will be built in Australia and South Africa. This paper describes the key science drivers of the SKA, provides an update on recent SKA Organisation activities and summarises the baseline design for Phase 1.
Status of the Square Kilometre Array
2018
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a global project to build a multi-purpose radio telescope that will play a major role in answering key questions in modern astrophysics and cosmology. It will be one of a small number of cornerstone observatories around the world that will provide astrophysicists and cosmologists with a transformational view of the Universe. Two major goals of the SKA is to study the history and role of neutral Hydrogen in the Universe from the dark ages to the present-day, and to employ pulsars as probes of fundamental physics. Since 2008, the global radio astronomy community has been engaged in the development of the SKA and is now nearing the end of the 'Pre-Construction' phase. This talk will give an overview of the current status of the SKA and the plans for construction, focusing on the computing and software aspects of the project.
Science with the Australian square kilometre array pathfinder
Publications of the …, 2007
The future of cm and m-wave astronomy lies with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a telescope under development by a consortium of 17 countries that will be 50 times more sensitive than any existing radio facility. Most of the key science for the SKA will be addressed through largearea imaging of the Universe at frequencies from a few hundred MHz to a few GHz. The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) is a technology demonstrator aimed in the mid-frequency range, and achieves instantaneous wide-area imaging through the development and deployment of phased-array feed systems on parabolic reflectors. The large field-of-view makes ASKAP an unprecedented synoptic telescope that will make substantial advances in SKA key science. ASKAP will be located at the Murchison Radio Observatory in inland Western Australia, one of the most radio-quiet locations on the Earth and one of two sites selected by the international community as a potential location for the SKA. In this paper, we outline an ambitious science program for ASKAP, examining key science such as understanding the evolution, formation and population of galaxies including our own, understanding the magnetic Universe, revealing the transient radio sky and searching for gravitational waves.
Fundamental physics with the Square Kilometre Array
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 2020
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a planned large radio interferometer designed to operate over a wide range of frequencies, and with an order of magnitude greater sensitivity and survey speed than any current radio telescope. The SKA will address many important topics in astronomy, ranging from planet formation to distant galaxies. However, in this work, we consider the perspective of the SKA as a facility for studying physics. We review four areas in which the SKA is expected to make major contributions to our understanding of fundamental physics: cosmic dawn and reionisation; gravity and gravitational radiation; cosmology and dark energy; and dark matter and astroparticle physics. These discussions demonstrate that the SKA will be a spectacular physics machine, which will provide many new breakthroughs and novel insights on matter, energy, and spacetime.
Science with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP)
2009
The future of cm and m-wave astronomy lies with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a telescope under development by a consortium of 17 countries that will be 50 times more sensitive than any existing radio facility. Most of the key science for the SKA will be addressed through large-area imaging of the Universe at frequencies from a few hundred MHz to a few GHz. The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) is a technology demonstrator aimed in the mid-frequency range, and achieves instantaneous wide-area imaging through the development and deployment of phased-array feed systems on parabolic reflectors. The large field-of-view makes ASKAP an unprecedented synoptic telescope that will make substantial advances in SKA key science. ASKAP will be located at the Murchison Radio Observatory in inland Western Australia, one of the most radio-quiet locations on the Earth and one of two sites selected by the international community as a potential location for the SKA. In this paper, we outline the ASKAP project and summarise its headline science goals as defined by the community at large.