Australian SKA Pathfinder
Visualisation of ASKAP dishes by Swinburne Astronomy Productions
Along with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) the Murchison Radioastronomy Observatory also accommodates another project led by the CSIRO and Office of Science and Innovation (OSI), the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP).
This next step towards the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be a next generation radio telescope incorporating novel receiver technologies and leading-edge ICT systems. ASKAP will be a world-class telescope in its own right as well as being a pathfinder instrument for the full Square Kilometre Array (SKA). It will comprise an array of 36 antennas each 12m in diameter, capable of high dynamic range imaging and using wide-field-of-view phased array feeds.
ASKAP will be a telescope that can capture radio images with unprecedented sensitivity over large areas of sky. With a large instantaneous field-of-view ASKAP will be able to survey the whole sky vastly faster than is possible with existing radio telescopes. In one week ASKAP will generate more information than is currently contained on the whole World Wide Web; in one month it will generate more information than is contained in the world’s academic libraries. This combination of survey speed and sensitivity will allow astronomers to answer some fundamental questions about the creation and early evolution of our Universe, and to test theories of cosmic magnetism and predictions from Einstein’s theory of relativity.
For more information about ASKAP see www.atnf.csiro.au/SKA/.
