Lisa Harvey-Smith - CSIRO Project Scientist for The Square Kilometre Array: "The SKA - What's Next?"
Following the official announcement only two weeks earlier that the SKA would be shared between Australia and South Africa, it was an opportune time for astronomer
Dr. Lisa Harvey-Smith - the Australian Project Scientist for the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope – to be our guest speaker at the Macarthur Astronomy Forum in June.
Lisa's talk was titled: “The SKA – What's Next?” and she was able to provide MAS with the latest update on the progress of this amazing telescope.
She began by displaying a logarithmic graph showing the upward trend in sensitivity of radio telescopes over the last seventy years and said that if new radio telescopes did not extend the trend further upwards, then radio astronomy would fizzle out. As the SKA will be fifty times more sensitive than any predecessor we may be safe for a while. You can see Jodrell Bank as the third square from the lower left of the graph. The proposed SKA sits at the top right:
Dr.
Lisa Harvey-Smith showing the logarithmic increase in telescope
sensitivity 1940-2020.
With massive amounts of data to be provided by the SKA Pathfinder (currently being commissioned at Murchison), the SKA and other new telescopes, data processing in particular is going to have to be much smarter, as are all the other technologies involved. Astronomers will have to be innovative and internationally cooperative, to share the science, technology and cost.
Conceived as long ago as 1991, the SKA is now moving into a really exciting phase. Already the SKA headquarters are under construction at the famous Jodrell Bank radio telescope facility in Cheshire, England and the detailed design phase for the SKA is under way.
The telescope will be constructed in two stages. The first stage will consist of 10% of the overall size and will be constructed between 2016 – 2019. This stage will be used to prove satisfactory technical performance. The construction of Stage 2 will be 2018 – 2023.
Murchison, in WA, an area larger than Holland but with a population of only 150, is already home to the ASKAP radio telescope and the Wide-field Array telescope. SKA Stage 1 will see a hundred 15m dia. dishes and low frequency antenna deployed at Murchison and the Meerkat installation expanded to 250 high frequency dishes in South Africa. SKA Stage 2 will see the completion of the low frequency antennae at Murchison and Southern Africa will see the high frequency installation expanded to make a total of 3000 dishes. The mid-frequency arrays will be constructed in Southern Africa as part of Stage 2.
The most astonishing part of this project is that it expects to use technology which is expected to be available in a few years when needed - but which does not yet exist! The SKA will not only be utilising the most modern data processing and communications equipment that can be developed, it will actually be instrumental in driving that development.
Make no mistake, this massive instrument is going to improve many facets of global technological expertise over the next few years and will then be providing the kind of scientific data about the Universe that astronomers have been dreaming of since 1991.
Following refreshments after Lisa's presentation, several members returned to the auditorium to pose for a picture with her:
Several MAS members posing with Dr. Harvey-Smith after the conclusion of the Forum meeting.
I don't know about other MAS members but I can't wait to find out what this amazing instrument has in store for us towards the end of the decade and beyond. These are very exciting times for radio astronomy and I am sure Lisa will provide us with updates along the way.
Footnote: This was Lisa's third visit to MAS. Her first talk in 2008, prior to her appointment as SKA Project Scientist, was called “Massive Stars: Live Fast and Die Young.” She returned twelve months ago to talk about: “A New Generation Telescope - The SKA.”
This article was written for submission to the Editor of "Prime Focus" magazine (the journal of Macarthur Astronomical Society) for inclusion in the July 2012 edition.