Abstract
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is an international effort to build the world s largest radio telescope, enabling science with unprecedented detail and survey speed. The project spans over a decade and is now at a mature stage, ready to enter the construction and integration phase. In the fully deployed state, the MID-Telescope consists of a 150-km diameter array of offset Gregorian antennas installed in the radio quiet zone of the Karoo desert (South Africa). Each antenna is equipped with three feed packages, that are precision positioned in the sub-reflector focus by a feed indexer platform. The total observational bandwidth (0.35-15.4GHz) is segmented into seven bands. Band 1 (0.35-1.05GHz) and Band 2 (0.95-1.76GHz) are implemented as individual feed packages. The remaining five bands (Bands 3, 4, 5a, 5b, and 6) are combined in a single feed package. Initially only Band 5a (4.6-8.5GHz) and Band 5b (8.3-15.4GHz) will be installed. This paper provides an overview of recent progress on design, test and integration of each feed package as well as project and science goals, timeline and path to construction.
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONThe Square Kilometre Array is an ambitious international project to build the world’s largest radio astronomy telescope that will enable breakthrough science and discoveries not achievable with the current facilities
The Square Kilometre Array is an ambitious international project to build the world’s largest radio astronomy telescope that will enable breakthrough science and discoveries not achievable with the current facilities.The SKA technology has been demonstrated by precursor telescopes: MeerKAT [1], [2], built in the Karoo desert (South Africa) and operational since 2018, currently the world’s most sensitive telescope array in L-band
ASKAP [3], able to achieve extremely high survey speed, and MWA [4], a low frequency telescope for large surveys of the southern hemisphere, are both commissioned at the Murchison Radioastronomy Observatory (MRO) in Western Australia
Summary
The Square Kilometre Array is an ambitious international project to build the world’s largest radio astronomy telescope that will enable breakthrough science and discoveries not achievable with the current facilities. The SKA technology has been demonstrated by precursor telescopes: MeerKAT [1], [2], built in the Karoo desert (South Africa) and operational since 2018, currently the world’s most sensitive telescope array in L-band. ASKAP [3], able to achieve extremely high survey speed, and MWA [4], a low frequency telescope for large surveys of the southern hemisphere, are both commissioned at the Murchison Radioastronomy Observatory (MRO) in Western Australia. The baseline design describes one observatory placed in three host countries: the Headquarters (HQ) in UK, the MID telescope in South Africa and the LOW telescope in western Australia [6], [7]. Further details on the technology developments for the Single Pixel Feed are provided in this paper along with the status of the project, the timeline and the roadmap to construction
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