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Top astronomers and engineers from nine countries met in Perth in early September to plan for pre-construction of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) at The Path to SKA-low workshop.

Hosted by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), the workshop attracted more than 75 researchers from Australia, India, Italy, Malta, New Zealand, the Netherlands, South Africa, the UK and the US.

ICRAR Deputy Director and workshop organiser, Professor Peter Hall, said the workshop looked at the design and construction of antennas to allow the SKA to detect low-frequency radio waves from objects throughout the universe
(SKA-low).

Professor Hall said with new technology and signal processing techniques, flashing radio sources – called pulsars – and other fast, “transient” radio sources could be better detected using lower frequency radio telescopes.

“This makes SKA-low an even more essential part of the SKA as a whole,” he said.

“A major goal of SKA-low is to observe the first structures in the very distant universe as they formed. ICRAR researchers have also recently shown the importance of SKA-low in observations of the changing, or dynamic, radio sky.”

Australia, together with New Zealand, is bidding to host the SKA, which requires an extremely radio-quiet location.

“SKA-low will be particularly sensitive to radio interference and a location such as Australia’s candidate core site, in WA’s Murchison, will allow a highperformance,cost-effective SKA-low,” adds Professor Hall.

The General Director of ASTRON in the Netherlands and the chairman of the SKA Science and Engineering Committee, Professor Michael Garrett, said he hoped ICRAR would play a leading role in the SKA-low pre-construction phase.

“It is essential that the knowledge and expertise built up via the Murchison Widefield Array finds its way back into the international SKA project,” Professor Garrett said.

“SKA-low will address Nobel-prize winning science questions about the early universe, and I’m convinced it will emerge as one of the dominant areas of astrophysical research over the next few decades. It’s great to see ICRAR, and indeed the Australian community as a whole, getting behind these efforts and becoming so heavily involved.”

Photo: Eye on the sky … (L-R) Professors Peter Hall (ICRAR), Jeanette Hacket (Curtin University), Peter Quinn (ICRAR) at the Path to SKA-low conference.