Introduction:The Square Kilometre Array telescope project (SKA)
(also known in Australia as the 1kT project)
A brief summary of the SKA telescope project is presented here. For more
details of the project, see the Technical
And Scientific Details page.
The SKA is the next-generation
centimetre-wave radio telescope, with a proposed collecting area at low frequencies (150 MHz to 1.5 GHz) of roughly 1 km2
(or 106 m2) - the equivalent of more than one hundred
dishes of 100 m diameter. In contrast, the largest and most sensitive existing
array has a physical area approximately one hundred times smaller than this. The SKA
telescope project involves collaborative strategic research with partners
from The Netherlands, Canada, India and the USA; overall co-ordination
is provided by working groups within the International Astronomical Union
(IAU), the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), and the OECD Megascience
Forum. The detailed specifications of the instrument are currently being
established and, on present estimates, the SKA could be completed in the
decade 2010-2020.
The Australian contributory project is being supported by both the ATNF
and the MNRF. The main thrust of the associated research
is in the area of interference mitigation and involves several overseas collaborators. In addition, research is being conducted into possible SKA systems, particularly into the defi
nition of a
n
optimum antenna array configuration and the study of dynamic range issues.
In work so far, predictions have been made of how the radio sky might appear
at flux density limits 100 times as faint as those of known surveys. In
addition, studies are underway of the response functions of large, many-element,
interferometers operating in a variety of configurations. A future aim is to combine these two research areas and use simulated observations of
the predicted radio sky for various model telescope array configurations to assist in determining an optimum telescope design.
For more details of the project, see the Technical
And Scientific Details page.
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Last update by Michelle Storey. 4/3/99