CSIRO's ASKAP Radio Telescope

CSIRO's new ASKAP antennas at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory. Image: Dragonfly Media.

ASKAP is designed to be a high speed survey instrument with high dynamic range. This requires an extremely wide field-of-view interferometer with Phased Array Feeds (PAFs) consisting of 188 elements in each of two polarisations as the focal plane detectors.

The specification for ASKAP is:

  • A total collecting area of approximately 4,000 square metres, from 36 antennas each 12 metres in diameter
  • System temperature less than 50 K
  • Frequency range from 700 MHz to 1.8 GHz
  • 300 MHz instantaneous bandwidth
  • 36 independent beams, each of about 1 square degree, yield overlapping to a 30 square degree field-of-view at 1.4 GHz
  • Maximum baseline of approximately 6 km
  • Full cross-correlation of all antennas
  • Possible remote array station capability located in NSW, approximately 3,000 km from the core site.

Take a Look at ASKAP

Latest News

Cables plugged into the ASKAP beamformer. Hardware correlator testing underway
June 2013: The ASKAP team will soon travel out to the MRO to test remote commissioning of the hardware correlator on site with ASKAP antennas.

ASKAP Update. Latest ASKAP Update now available
May 2013: The latest edition of the ASKAP Update is now available for download.

A ground view of ASKAP antennas standing under a sunny sky. Selavy supports source finding for ASKAP SSTs
May 2013: The ASKAP Computing team has created a test source-finder to simulate and analyse expected data sets from ASKAP.

More ASKAP news

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