| Australian SKA Pathfinder | |
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CSIRO's ASKAP antennas at the MRO in Western Australia. Credit: Ant Schinckel, CSIRO.
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| Organization | CSIRO |
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| Location | Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, Western Australia, Australia |
The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, or ASKAP, is CSIRO’s new radio telescope currently under construction at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) in Mid West region of Western Australia. Construction on ASKAP began in late 2009 and is expected to be completed by 2013[1].
ASKAP’s combination of fast survey speed and high 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 general relativity[2].
ASKAP will also be an important technology demonstrator for the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, a future international radio telescope that will be the world’s largest and most sensitive[3]. ASKAP's home, the MRO, is also the candidate 'core' site in Australia and New Zealand's bid for the SKA.
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Development and construction of ASKAP is being led by CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science (CASS), in collaboration with scientists and engineers in The Netherlands, Canada and the USA, as well as colleagues from Australian universities and industry partners in China[4].
Once built, ASKAP will form part of CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility along with existing telescopes at Parkes, Narrabri and Mopra[5].
| External videos | |
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| Watch a video of the first ASKAP antenna construction at the MRO in January 2010. | |
ASKAP will be made up of 36 identical antennas, each 12 metres in diameter, working together as a single instrument to achieve a total collecting area of approximately 4,000 square metres.
The unique features that will make ASKAP an unprecedented synoptic telescope include a wide field-of-view, large spectral bandwidth, extremely fast survey speed, and excellent u-v coverage[6].
ASKAP will be located in the Murchison district in Western Australia, a region that is extremely "radio-quiet" due to the low population density and resultant lack of radio interference (generated by human activity) that would otherwise interfere with weak astronomical signals[7].
The unique radio quiet nature is being recognised as a natural resource and is being protected by the Australian Commonwealth and Western Australia State Government through a range of protective regulatory measures.
Data from ASKAP will be transmitted from the MRO to a supercomputer at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Perth. The data will be converted to images of the sky in near-real-time by a pipeline processor running the purpose-built ASKAPsoft package[8]. All data will be placed in the public domain after being checked for quality by the ten ASKAP Survey Science Teams. Post processing will be performed by theSkyNet.[9]
During ASKAP’s first five years of operation, at least 75% of its time will be used for large Survey Science Projects. ASKAP is expected to make substantial advances in key areas, including the following[10]:
In 2009, after an open call for proposals, CSIRO announced that ten major science projects had been selected to use ASKAP[11]. Of the ten projects’ authors, 33% were from Australia and New Zealand, 30% from North America, 28% from Europe, and 9% from elsewhere in the world.
The ten ASKAP Survey Science Projects are: