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The year ahead in space

Jonathan Nally — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:00:43 +0000

Artist's impression of the Curiosity rover on Mars. The craft is due to arrive on Mars on August 6, 2012.

THIS YEAR IS GOING TO BE A BIG ONE in terms of space activity, and will include some events you’ll be able to experience firsthand. Let’s count down the top five.

At number five we have NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, carrying the Curiosity rover to the Red Planet. Scheduled to arrive on August 6, it will land in Gale Crater (named after a 19th-20th century Australian astronomer, Walter Frederick Gale) and look for signs of organic chemicals. The 900-kilogram, nuclear-powered rover has a primary mission of two years but is expected to last for much longer than that.

At number four we have the total eclipse of the Sun on November 14. The path of totality runs along a narrow west-east strip of far northern Queensland, taking in Cairns and surrounding areas. The thousands of people who are expected to flock to the area will experience two minutes of totality shortly after sunrise—observers elsewhere in Australia will witness a partial eclipse.

After this, the next total solar eclipse to be visible from Australia will be in 2028, when the path of totality will run straight through Sydney.

The transit of Venus will be seen on the morning of June 6 in Australia. There won't be another one until the year 2117.

Coming in at number three is an event you won’t want to miss, as you’ll never get a chance to see another one. It’s the transit of Venus, which will happen on the morning of June 6. A transit occurs when one of the inner planets, in this case Venus, moves between Earth and the Sun and we see it as a small black dot slowly crawling across the solar face. It was to observe a transit of Venus that Captain Cook travelled to the South Pacific in the 18th century … and on his way home bumped into a certain large, dry continent, girt by sea.

Transits of Venus are very rare. They happen in pairs eight years apart (so the last one was in 2004), but between pairs there is a gap of over 100 years. So the 20th century totally missed out, and after June there won’t be another one until the year 2117. So don’t miss it!

Number two on our list is the decision on where the Square Kilometre Array, or SKA, will be built. The SKA will be an enormous network of radio dishes and antennae spread over an area the size of a continent. It will enable astronomers to look back towards the beginning of time, and study the evolution of stars and galaxies throughout cosmic history.

Artist's impression of part of the Square Kilometre Array.

In a situation reminiscent of the Olympics, two regions have put in bids to host the facility and are eagerly awaiting the decision of the international panel. A joint bid by Australia and New Zealand is up against a consortium of southern African countries. The decision could be announced next month. If Australasia gets it, the core of the network will be located in a remote region of Western Australia, but with many other dishes spread out across the nation and into New Zealand.

And so after all of these fantastic events, what could we possibly have in the number one spot on our countdown? What will be this year’s biggest cosmic event? Why, the very survival of Planet Earth of course! In case you haven’t heard, a lot of people seem to be very worried about two things—the apparent end of the Mayan Long Count calendar in December (and the implied end of civilisation as we know it), and a collision between Earth and a planet called Nibiru.

Well, as far as the Mayan calendar is concerned, there is no cause for alarm. Like the Gregorian calendar we use every day, it will simply tick over to a new Long Count and we’ll all live happily every after.

That is, unless we get wiped out by that collision with Nibiru. Frightened? Don’t be. For you see, there’s a basic flaw in the Nibiru hypothesis, and it’s simply this … Nibiru doesn’t exist. It’s a fiction invented by some loopy, cosmic conspiracy nutters. There is no evidence for such a planet, and no evidence that Earth is in any danger from a collision with any other planet, known or unknown. Phew!

UPDATE, February 6: BTW, I misspoke on the Today Show this morning, saying that the next total solar eclipse after this year’s one will occur in the year 2128. I should have said 2028 of course.

Story by Jonathan Nally

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Australian SKA site producing the goods

Jonathan Nally — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 06:45:19 +0000

Western Australia radioastronomy site now active
Already producing world-class research
Targets are as close as the Moon and as distant as quasars

CSIRO’s MURCHISON RADIOASTRONOMY OBSERVATORY (MRO), located in remote Western Australia, is the site proposed by Australia and New Zealand to host the high-density core of the multi-billion dollar Square Kilometre Array (SKA), and is already producing world-class research that will be described at an international conference in the UK this week.

The research uses the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a $50m SKA Precursor telescope located at the MRO. The MWA project is led by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) at Curtin University.

MWA Project Director, Professor Steven Tingay, will be presenting the results at an international conference in the UK last week, and said, “The MWA is just starting to come online but is already producing world-class research, due to the extraordinarily high quality of the MRO as a location for ultra-sensitive radio telescopes.”

The MWA uses stationary antennae that look like strange metallic spiders, with no moving parts. There will be 128 groups of 16 antennae, each group known as a “tile”. The system will use huge computing power to undertake sensitive surveys of the cosmos.

Unlike the CSIRO's Parkes "dish", the Murchison Widefield Array uses strange-looking antennae space out on the ground. Seen here are three groups of 16 antennae. The system will use 128 groups.

Low interference level

Professor Tingay said that a critical requirement for the MWA is the need to operate in an environment free from radio interference generated by human activities. FM radio stations, mobile phones, cars and industrial activities are major sources of interference that drown out the whisper-faint radio signals from objects in the distant universe.

“For this reason, the MWA has been constructed at the MRO, where the level of interference is much lower than most other observatory locations around the world. An indication of the MRO site’s pristine conditions is the amount of data that is lost due to interference. At the MRO this is less than 1%, compared to close to 100% at some other observatory locations around the world,” said Tingay.

Due for completion November this year, the MWA already has a steady flow of research from it’s current configuration due to the excellent radio-quiet conditions of the MRO.

Recently, astronomers from MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have used the MWA to image an area of the sky 20,000 times larger than the full Moon, covering a region of the universe that the MWA will search for the very first stars and galaxies to form, soon after the Big Bang. Researchers from the University of Washington have determined that the MWA should be capable of detecting these signals.

Aside from these papers, an avalanche of astrophysics research from the MWA is about to appear in print, ranging from studies of explosions on the Sun, to observations of signals bouncing off the Moon, to surveys looking for highly variable quasars.

The MWA is being delivered by an international consortium of 13 institutions in four countries: Australia; the USA; India; and New Zealand.

More information: Murchison Widefield Array

Adapted from information issued by ICRAR. Photography by Paul Bourke and Jonathan Knispel (supported by WASP (UWA), iVEC, ICRAR, and CSIRO).

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Revolutionary new telescope in WA

Jonathan Nally — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:43:36 +0000

Antennae of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, Western Australia. Credit: Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker (ICRAR).

A QUEST TO STUDY the earliest stars and galaxies in the Universe is underway, with local industry building the first major pieces of a revolutionary new radio telescope in Western Australia, as part of the Murchison Wide-field Array.

Murchison Wide-field Array (MWA) industry partner and Fremantle-based high-technology company, Poseidon Scientific Instruments (PSI), has been awarded a $1.3m contract by Curtin University to build 16 packages of sensitive electronics, using a smart design suited to the environmental and radio-quiet conditions of outback WA.

The MWA is located at the Murchison Radio-Astronomy Observatory, a site operated by CSIRO and a proposed core site for the multi-billion dollar Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

The MWA will be the first of three official SKA precursor telescopes to be completed, proving the technology and science on the path to the SKA. Australia and New Zealand are bidding to host the SKA, with the site location to be decided in February 2012.

The desolate landscape of outback Western Australia is perfect for radio astronomy.

The MWA is being built by an Australian consortium led by The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia, in close collaboration with US, Indian and New Zealand partners.

ICRAR Deputy Director, Professor Steven Tingay, said PSI was a world-class technology company and working with its local expertise to design and develop components for the international project was an enormous advantage.

“PSI will build 16 electronics packages for the MWA, the culmination of more than two years of collaboration in which PSI have been deeply involved in the design cycle. They are a valued collaborator, not just another cog in the supply chain,” Professor Tingay said.

The innovative package would also prevent the electronics from interfering with other equipment on the site, preserving the uniquely radio-quiet environment of the Murchison.

“The combination of the MWA and the radio-quiet environment of the Murchison will allow us to search for the incredibly weak signals that come from the early stages in the evolution of the Universe, some 13 billion years ago,” Professor Tingay said.

One of ICRAR’s goals is to partner with Australian industries to help position them to participate in future radio astronomy opportunities, such as the SKA. The MWA partnership with PSI is one such success story.

Adapted from information issued by ICRAR. Panorama image by Paul Bourke and Jonathan Knispel (supported by WASP (UWA), iVEC, ICRAR, and CSIRO).

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Radio astronomy protected in Western Australia

Jonathan Nally — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:37:33 +0000

Artist's impression of dishes that will make up the SKA radio telescope.

ENHANCED PROTECTIONS are now in place for the Mid West Radio Quiet Zone (RQZ) in remote Western Australia (near Boolardy Station), around 200 kilometres east of Meekatharra…a candidate site for the proposed Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

The RQZ was established in 2005 to provide an environment that protects highly sensitive equipment used for radio astronomy from unwanted radio communications signals.

These arrangements protect the radio telescopes currently in place at the Murchison Radioastronomy Observatory—such as the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Murchison Wide-field Array (MWA)—as well as those proposed in the Australian-New Zealand bid to host the SKA.

One of the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) dishes.

“A clear regulatory framework to support radio quiet arrangements will further assist Australia to create the world’s best radioastronomy facility,” said Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) Chairman, Chris Chapman.

“This will provide a platform that should be ideal for future radioastronomy projects, including the €1.5 billion SKA project.”

Mr Chapman said the new protection measures provide greater clarity and certainty to the arrangements that protect radio astronomy services in the RQZ.

‘The new measures continue to provide for radio quiet while supporting the use of spectrum by other users and placing the lowest feasible burden on industry in the region,’ said Mr Chapman.

The introduction of the enhanced protections for the RQZ follows a very extensive consultation process in which the ACMA sought the views of interested stakeholders.

More information: ACMA Planning for the radio astronomy service

Adapted from information issued by ACMA. Images courtesy SPDO / Swinburne Astronomy Productions / CASS / Terrace Photographers.

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Dishes take shape in the desert

Jonathan Nally — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:00:05 +0000

The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, or ASKAP, is under construction in the remote Western Australian desert.

THE CSIRO’S LATEST RADIO TELESCOPE—the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, or ASKAP—is now taking shape in the remote Western Australian desert.

When completed in 2012 it will comprise 36 dishes all acting in concert to produce the same result as one big dish. Cutting-edge receiver technology invented by CSIRO scientists will give it an extremely wide field of view. This, coupled with high-speed electronics and an ultra-fast optical fibre link to a dedicated computing centre in Perth, will make ASKAP arguably the best radio telescope system in the world.

ASKAP’s first five years of observations are already booked out by teams from around the world, and the science studies it will tackle are some of the biggest around—how did the earliest stars and galaxies form; how have galaxies evolved through time; what role has magnetism played in the cosmos; and can Einstein’s theories stand ever-more stringent tests?

ASKAP Project Director, Antony Schinckel

ASKAP is also the Australian and New Zealand “pathfinder” for the ultimate prize—the Square Kilometre Array, or SKA. The SKA will be a vast collection of thousands of dishes and antennae spread across an area the size of a continent. A decision will be made next year by an international committee, as to whether the SKA will be hosted in Australia-New Zealand or southern Africa. The linked telescopes will make images ten times more detailed than those of the Hubble Space Telescope.

SpaceInfo.com.au wanted to get an update on progress with ASKAP, so we spoke to the man in charge—ASKAP Project Director Antony Schinckel, of CSIRO’s Astronomy and Space Science division—to find out how things are going in the WA desert:

Can you give us a rundown on the state of construction of ASKAP?

We’re very happy with how things are going—we’re at the point where there is substantial activity on site. Major infrastructure construction commenced in May. The first phase of that was that the company doing the work needed to put in their temporary accommodation camp, as there are no motels for hundreds of kilometres!

Between now and early December we’ll complete all of the 30 remaining antenna foundations, the access tracks to each antennae, fibre and power distribution around the site and to each antenna, and then the central building as well—all of the primary infrastructure that doesn’t include the science instruments and power systems.

It must be a difficult task, building hi-tech facilities that are essentially in the middle of nowhere?

With these remote sites there are a lot of logistics that need to be understood and got moving properly, but the contractors have a fair bit of experience with that. Most of it is normal civil engineering, although there are a few subtleties—for instance, the concrete foundations for the antennae need to be a certain minimum stiffness.

The unusual bits in a sense are the optical data fibre links between the antennae and the central site. Our raw data rate will be phenomenally high, about 74 terabits per second for the total 36 antennae. That data then goes into some special equipment (the beam former and the correlator) which ramps down the rate fairly significantly before it is sent via cable down to Perth.

ASKAP will comprise 36 hi-tech antennae

How are you going to handle the enormous amounts of data produced by the 36 ASKAP antennae?

Well, it’s going to be a really interesting challenge how we treat this. We can’t afford to archive the absolute raw data—the volume is just too high. So working out which are the critical data products to archive right up front is going to prove a real challenge. We’ve clearly got some plans on which ones are the most important, but it’ll be fascinating to see over the next few years if we end up archiving those or finding we have to modify it a little bit.

The Pawsey Centre in Perth is a key part of this in terms of the data reduction.

The actual fibre in the ground that CSIRO has put in, is through a contract with AARNet with major sub-contracts to CCTS and North Coast Holdings, out of Geraldton. The fibre has now been fully laid and tested. The fibre is all buried, which is easier long term than having it up on aerial poles. The fibre is better protected when buried. There are three booster huts along the length of the fibre.

There are two remote booster huts that are solar powered with the possibility of back-up diesel if required. And there’s one in the town of Mullewa, which is just on grid power with back-up.

As far as terrain goes, there’s a gentle slope 350km up from Geraldton to the site—we end up at an elevation of about 370 metres.

How will you supply electrical power to such a remote site?

With power, our intention long-term is to have as a renewable a power source as we possibly can. For all sorts of obvious reasons, we want to go with generating most of our power through whatever renewable resources we have. Out in that region of Western Australia in particular, solar power is extremely attractive. It’s one of the places with the highest solar insolation in the world. So solar will be a substantial part of it.

To begin with we’ll have a base power capability from diesel generators, but over a number of years we’ll be expecting to be adding or start off with some solar on top of the diesel, and then in a couple of more years we have some additional funds that will enable us to expand that significantly around 2013-14.

The CSIRO has been particularly pleased with the quality of the antennae, built by the 54th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (known as CETC54).

Power storage is something of an issue. That’s partly why we’ve put the funding back a couple of years, to see what eventuates with power storage options by the time ASKAP is really up and operational. The focus now is on what we need to get it going.

You have six dishes installed and two more being installed right now. What’s the schedule for the rest of them?

It’s a fairly continuous process of installing the remaining antennae right through this year and into early 2012, at about 3 to 4 per month. A team from the Chinese manufacturer, CETC54, comes out to supervise their construction.

With the dishes, there’s one point there that we’ve been particularly thrilled with. We specified a surface accuracy of 1mm but the delivered capability substantially exceeds that—most of the antennae are coming in with an accuracy of about 0.5mm. This means in the long-term they could be used to do observations at much higher frequencies than originally planned, giving us very good long-term flexibility.

Another thing that CETC54 has achieved is that we don’t have to adjust the surfaces. They’ve come up with a manufacturing technique in China and then at installation here that means it’s literally a case of just bolting the dish panels together … there’s no fine adjustment necessary here in Australia.

Given that it is such remote site, will there be people stationed there on a regular basis?

No, not for operations. Like most telescopes these days, it can be operated by remote control from anywhere. However, with an array as big and as complex as this—36 antennae, vast data rates, these huge specialised digital systems—it really is a dramatic step forward. The telescope is about a factor of 10 more powerful than any other radio telescope in the world. So regular maintenance will be required to keep the system up and running, and there will be people going out to the site to do that.

ASKAP is being built in one of the remotest parts of the world, 350 kilometres inland from Geraldton in Western Australia.

Finally, from a personal standpoint, what’s it like to be out there in the WA desert? The conditions must be pretty challenging.

Many telescopes are built in remote sites, but mostly they’re built where there’s already some level of infrastructure. For us working out at Boolardy Station, you have to bring in absolutely everything. You know intellectually that that’s true, but nonetheless on the day when you realise you really do need that special screwdriver, you find it is 350km away! It’s one of those classics where you know philosophically how to do something, and you think you’ve got it covered…but boy, there really is no give and take on that.

Summers out there are pretty warm. We’ve managed to move schedules around to deal with that, and it’s quite manageable; it’s just a case of thinking things out sensibly. We’ve worked a lot with regional contractors in WA who are experienced at this and we’ve shifted our mindset to suit the climate.

The wildlife situation reminds us that we’re living in Australia. The numbers of kangaroos, emus, goannas and snakes, has been quite impressive. Snakes in particular are the most dangerous local wildlife, but we’ve got good procedures in place to deal with them.

Story by Jonathan Nally, SpaceInfo.com.au. Images courtesy CASS / Terrace Photographers / Paul Bourke and Jonathan Knispel (Supported by WASP (UWA), iVEC, ICRAR, and CSIRO).

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Milestone as radio dishes linked

Jonathan Nally — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 01:39:24 +0000

Antennae of CSIRO's Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope in Western Australia were linked with other dishes across Australasia to provide incredible detail of a distant quasar. Photo: Terrace Photographers

THE DISCOVERY POTENTIAL of the future international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope has been glimpsed following the commissioning of a working optical fibre link between CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope in Western Australia, and other radio telescopes across Australia and New Zealand.

The achievement will be announced at the 2011 International SKA Forum, taking place this week in Banff, Canada.

On 29 June, six telescopes—ASKAP, three CSIRO telescopes in New South Wales, a University of Tasmania telescope and another operated by the Auckland University of Technology—were used together to observe a radio source that may be two black holes orbiting each other.

Data from all sites were streamed in real time to Curtin University in Perth (a node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research) and there processed to make an image.

This ability to successfully link antennae (dishes) over large distances will be vital for the future $2.5 billion SKA telescope, which will have several thousand antennae, up to 5,500 kilometres apart, working together as a single telescope. Linking antennae in such a manner allows astronomers to see distant galaxies in more detail.

The network of radio telescope dishes stretched across Australia and New Zealand. Image: Carl Davies, CSIRO

“We now have an SKA-scale network in Australia and New Zealand: a combination of CSIRO and NBN-supported fibre and the existing AARNET and KAREN research and education networks,” said SKA Director for Australasia, Dr Brian Boyle.

Watching as black holes feed

The radio source the astronomers targeted was PKS 0637-752, a quasar that lies more than seven and a half billion light-years away from us.

This quasar emits a spectacular radio jet with regularly spaced bright spots in it, like a string of pearls. Some astronomers have suggested that this striking pattern is created by two black holes in orbit around each other, one black hole periodically triggering the other to ‘feed’ and emit a burst of radiation.

The radio dish network was used to zoom in on quasar PKS0637-752, at the heart of which is thought to be two black holes circling each other. ATCA image: L. Godfrey (Curtin Uni.) and J. Lovell (Uni. of Tasmania). Image from telescope network: S. Tingay (Curtin Uni.) et al.

‘It’s a fascinating object, and we were able to zoom right into its core, seeing details just a few millionths of a degree in scale, equivalent to looking at a 10-cent piece from a distance of 1,000 kilometres,’ said CSIRO astronomer Dr Tasso Tzioumis.

During the experiment Dr Tzioumis and fellow CSIRO astronomer Dr Chris Phillips controlled all the telescopes over the Internet from Sydney.

Curtin University’s Professor Steven Tingay and his research team built the system used to process the telescope data. “Handling the terabytes of data that will stream from ASKAP is within reach, and we are on the path to the SKA,” he said.

“For an SKA built in Australia and New Zealand, this technology will help connect the SKA to major radio telescopes in China, Japan, India and Korea.”

AARNet, which provides the data network for Australia’s research institutions, has recently shown that it can implement data rates of up to 40 Gbps on existing fibre networks. That figure is for a single wavelength, and one fibre can support up to 80 wavelengths.

Adapated from information issued by CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science.

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Aboriginal community names CSIRO telescope

Jonathan Nally — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:26:56 +0000

One of the ASKAP dishes at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia. The first six dishes (of an eventual 36) have been given indigenous names.

THE FIRST SIX ANTENNAE of CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope in Western Australia have today received names in the local Wajarri language.

The names, chosen by the Wajarri people, were bestowed by representatives of seven Aboriginal families at a ceremony at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, about 315 km northeast of Geraldton.

Name plaques will be fixed to each antenna. Further naming will take place as more antennae are installed and eventually all 36 of ASKAP’s antennae will have a Wajarri name.

The antenna names are: Bilyarli (which means “galah”, and is also the name of a past Wajarri Elder, Mr Frank Ryan); Bundarra (stars); Wilara (the Moon); Jirdilungu (the Milky Way); Balayi (a lookout, as this antenna looks down westward to others); and Diggidumble (a nearby table-top hill).

CSIRO ASKAP Director, Antony ("Ant") Schinckel has been named "Minga", the Wajarri name for "ant".

“These names will be a permanent reminder that this is the land of the Wajarri people,” said the Chair of Wajarri Yamatji Native Title Group, Gavin Egan.

Roads and other significant structures will also be given Wajarri names.

One of the roads will be called Ngurlubarndi, the Wajarri name for Fred Simpson, a past Wajarri Elder and father of Wajarri Elder, Ike Simpson.

CSIRO’s ASKAP Director, Antony (“Ant”) Schinckel has also been given a Wajarri name—”Minga”, which means “ant”.

In March CSIRO awarded McConnell Dowell Constructors (Aust) Pty Ltd the contract to construct support infrastructure at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory.

The work involves the construction of several kilometres of access roads and tracks, power and data distribution, a central control building, and foundation pads for the rest of the 36 antennae that will be installed on the site by early 2012.

The MRO is located in the Mid West region of Western Australia. As well as being home to ASKAP, it is also the Australia–New Zealand candidate core site for the future $2.5bn Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project.

Adapted from information issued by CSIRO. Images courtesy Tim Wheeler and Terrace Photographers.

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More funding for Aus-NZ Super Scope bid

Jonathan Nally — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:06:46 +0000

Artist's impression of dishes that will make up the SKA radio telescope.

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WILL PROVIDE an extra $40.2 million over four years to support Australia’s bid to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), in partnership with New Zealand.

The SKA will be the largest and most advanced radio telescope ever constructed. It will consist of thousands of antennae, spread out across a continent and connected by a fibre-optic network, with the data it generates processed by a powerful supercomputer.

Australia is an ideal candidate to host the SKA, thanks to the data and speed capabilities of the National Broadband Network, our large tracts of radio-quiet land and our research strengths in astronomy, the physical sciences and ICT.

Australia’s joint bid with New Zealand is one of two short-listed to host the SKA, with a final decision on the site expected early in 2012.

This funding will assist Australia’s bid and support pre-construction design and development work if the bid is successful.

Attracting global investment in this massive technologically advanced project to Australia will generate spin-off returns for business.

Researchers and engineers from the world’s leading institutions will work together on the SKA, developing the next generation technologies the project will demand. In turn, Australia’s research community will build their skills and expand their networks.

They can use those same capabilities to create cutting-edge products for consumers in computing, in renewable energy and in communications.

By the end of 2011 the SKA programme will be ready to transition to the detailed design and pre-construction engineering phase.

Adapted from information issued by the office of Senator the Hon Kim Carr. Images courtesy SPDO.

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Super Science with the SKA

Jonathan Nally — Thu, 05 May 2011 14:01:59 +0000

THE SQUARE KILOMETRE ARRAY (SKA) will be a new generation radio telescope 50 times more powerful than current instruments. It will be built in the Southern Hemisphere, either in Africa or Australia-New Zealand where the view of the Galaxy is the best and there is little radio interference.

An international project involving some 20 countries, the SKA will be one of the largest and most ambitious science projects ever devised. It has an estimated construction cost of €1.5 billion and a total cost of €9 billion ($13 billion) over its expected 50-year lifetime.

In this video, Professor Peter Quinn, Director of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Perth, Western Australia; Dr Brian Boyle, Australasian SKA Director; and other leaders in Australian astronomy, explain why they’re so excited about the SKA.

The decision on whether the joint Australia-New Zealand bid will host the SKA is expected in 2012.

More information:

ICRAR

SKA

CSIRO Astronomy & Space Sciences

Adapted from information issued by ICRAR / NASA.

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Astronomy linking Australia and Asia

Jonathan Nally — Tue, 03 May 2011 04:12:53 +0000

New radio telescopes are being brought online in India, China, Japan and Korea.

THE LATEST ADVANCES and scientific benefits of the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) will be discussed by radio astronomy researchers from the Asia-Oceania region in Perth tomorrow (Wednesday, 3 May 2011).

VLBI connects radio telescopes hundreds to thousands of kilometres apart, creating a telescope the size of a continent. With such a telescope, the sky can be viewed in amazing detail, with a resolution of a millionth of a degree.

About 40 researchers from 16 organisations will attend the Advances in Asia and Oceania Toward Very Long Baseline Interferometry in the Age of the Square Kilometre Array, held at the Perth Zoo from 4-6 May.

Professor Steven Tingay, ICRAR Deputy Director, said rapid and impressive advances in VLBI were taking place throughout Asia and Oceania.

Artist's impression of SKA radio astronomy dishes

“With the high level of technical expertise in the region and new radio telescopes being brought online in India, China, Japan and Korea, it is timely to come together and discuss VLBI and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA),” Professor Tingay said.

Participants will discuss VLBI projects throughout Asia and Oceania as well as what scientific benefits the SKA can provide for the region. The techniques behind VLBI are exactly the same as will be used for the SKA.

When complete, the SKA will be the largest radio astronomy instrument ever constructed and may be situated in the Asia/Oceania region if the Australia and New Zealand bid is successful.

The workshop is sponsored by the Federal Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development, CSIRO and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research.

ICRAR is a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia providing research excellence in the field of radio astronomy.

Adapted from information issued by Curtin University. Earth images courtesy NASA.

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