SKA signals loud and clear

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Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, has received radio signals from the first antenna to be assembled as part of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope.

The ASKAP is an important precursor in the bid to host the SKA telescope, an international radio telescope that will, once complete, be the largest and most sensitive in the world.

“It’s a great moment – the first time a telescope receives light or radio waves – is always very satisfying and exciting. It means the project is firmly on track,” said Dr David DeBoer CSIRO ASKAP project director.

”The test results show that the antenna is working beautifully, beyond specifications.”

The antenna, assembled over the Australian summer at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the Mid West region of Western Australia, is part of the first of 36 identical 12-metre dishes that will make up the ASKAP telescope.The signals received were from a satellite and were part of a project to measure the shape of the antenna’s surface using holography.

This involves combining a satellite test signal reflected from the antenna’s surface with the same signal received by a small ‘reference’ dish, producing an image that shows if the antenna’s surface deviates from the ‘perfect’ shape.

Professor Brian Boyle, CSIRO’s SKA director said, “ASKAP’s progress to date shows that our goals, although ambitious, are achievable.”

The journey to a thousand SKA dishes begins with a single photon.”

Once built, ASKAP will be operated by CSIRO’s Astronomy and Space Science division which provides radio-astronomy facilities for use by Australian and international scientists. ASKAP will allow astronomers to answer questions about cosmic magnetism, and the evolution and formation of galaxies, and to assist in the discovery of pulsars and possibly gravitational waves.

For more information visit, www.skatelescope.org