ASKAP Technical Specifications and Sensitivities


Details of ASKAP's expected system parameters, survey speed and sensitivities are given below.

ASKAP System Parameters

The system parameters for ASKAP are given in the table below:

Number of dishes 36
Dish diameter (m) 12
Dish area (sq m) 113
Total collecting area (sq m) 4072
Aperture efficiency 0.8
System temperature (K) 50
Field-of-view (deg2) 30
Frequency range (MHz) 700-1800
Bandwidth (MHz) 300
Maximum channels 16384
Maximum baseline (km) 6

Notes to the table: The system temperature and aperture efficiency have yet to be determined and the numbers above are indicative only. The field-of-view is independent of observing frequency.

Details and performance of the intial array configurations can be found on the Array Configuration web page, with the PDF available here [2.6MB PDF].

Survey Speed and Sensitivity

The survey speed and sensitivities tables from the configuration document are repeated here:

Parameter 10'' 18'' 30'' 90'' 180'' units
Continuum survey speed (300 MHz, 100 uJy) 220 361 267 54 17 deg2/hr
Line survey speed (100 kHz, 5 mJy) 184 301 223 45 14 deg2/hr
Surface brightness survey speed (5 kHz, 1 K) - - 1.1 18 94 deg2/hr

Table 1: Indicative survey speeds for different angular resolutions under the assumption of a 50 K system temperature and an aperture efficiency of 0.8.


Parameter 10'' 18'' 30'' 90'' 180'' units
Continuum sensitivity (300 MHz) 37 29 34 74 132 µJy/bm
Line sensitivity (100 kHz) 2.1 1.6 1.9 4.1 7.3 mJy/bm
Surface brightness sensitivity (5 kHz) - - 5.2 1.3 0.56 K

Table 2: Indicative sensitivity for 1 hour observation at different angular resolutions, assuming 50 K system temperature and an aperture efficiency of 0.8.

Further Information


Back to top