In what has been called “the largest ever gathering of people working on the international SKA project”, some 300 engineers and scientists recently gathered in Fremantle, WA, to progress the development of the international SKA telescope and make the project a reality.
To cap off the week, a small number of visitors were given an unique opportunity to visit CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, home to SKA precursors ASKAP and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), and also the site of Australian infrastructure for the SKA.
As part of the site visit, the attendees were treated to tours of the ASKAP antennas and the MRO Control Building, as well as a visit to the core of the MWA and a sneak-peak at the SKA pre-construction LFAA (low-frequency aperture array) Consortium test antenna array attached to the MWA as part of SKA pre-construction activities.