Square Kilometre Array

Square Kilometre Array (SKA) An internationally owned and operated radio telescope that, when completed, will have a collecting area of 1 million square metres, a hundred times greater than the Very Large Array. The heart of the SKA will be a compact core 5 km across containing about 50% of the total collecting area, comprising individual dishes and phased arrays. Around this core will be an extended array, some 150 km in diameter. So‐called ‘stations’ will be arranged along spiral arms radiating outwards from the core, the separation between stations increasing with distance from the centre. Each station will be about 100 m wide and consist of a hundred or so steerable antennas each of about 12 m aperture. This extended array will contain about 25% of the SKA's total collecting area. The remaining stations will be positioned across continental distances, out to 3000 km or more. The SKA will operate over a broad spread of wavelengths from about 1 cm (c.25 GHz) to 3 m (100 MHz). Its centre will be located in a large, radio‐quiet area of either Australia or Southern Africa. The SKA will be so sensitive that, in addition to radio‐astronomy observations with resolutions of a few thousandths of an arc second, it could detect television broadcasts coming from the nearest stars. The final site for the SKA was expected to be selected in 2008, with initial operation in 2015 and completion by 2020. http://www.skatelescope.org/