SKA Decision due on Friday

[astroron]

Here's hoping Australia is successful :thumbsup:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18194984

Cheers :thumbsup:

[JB80]

Oooh, about time.
It's 9:30am here now so I hope they can sort it out soon, my guess we might have to wait all day for the decision though.

Fingers crossed.:)

edit: Just read that a media conference is scheduled for 3:30pm today, another 6 hours away.

[JB80]

It's to be shared. :D
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18194984#TWEET150666
Any news on how it's to be split up yet?

ANZ low frequency and SA mid frequency, apparantly.

[jjjnettie]

I guess they'll have to sit down and work that out.
I'm still not sure how I feel about this decision.

[JB80]

It'll feel a lot better if we got the core array and data centre as well.

A statement will be released soon according to the buzz on twitter although some are saying SA will have the most.



http://spaceinfo.com.au/2012/05/26/ska-telescope-to-be-split/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SpaceAndAstron omyNewsDaily-Spaceinfocomau+%28SpaceInfo.com.au+--+Space+and+Astronomy+news+daily%29

[Adelastro1]

Didn't see that coming, but a lot better than nothing! It makes sense to use ASKAP which isn't too far off running. A great test run for the real thing, and to work out how to handle all that data at once!

I reckon this is as big for astronomy as the LHC for particle physics! And we have a part of it! Now the government needs to be fully supportive and also better promote science as a career pathway. I work in Sciences at Adelaide Uni and we always have to put in a lot of effort to promote science as most disciplines struggle to attract students. Schools need to get on board and promote it too! Having facilities like this certainly helps though! I now look forward to talking to potential students about the SKA... :D

[AstralTraveller]

So, is the glass is half full or half empty? :shrug: I think half full - we have a share of something really big and that has to be good. It will be interesting to see the executive summary of the report (I assume the full report will be a massive tome) and see how they perceive the relative merits.

[madbadgalaxyman]

A major share of "the prize" is given to a country with no real background in radio astronomy, with significant political risk and very significant internal security problems, and which had a major technical failure with the SALT telescope.
That country is not Australia!

I just knew that they were going to give it to S.A. in order to "help the underprivileged"

In contrast, as we all know, Australia is equal-second in the world in Radio Astronomy (with the Netherlands), and it has a long history of successful radio astronomy projects..... with a lot of first-rate professional radio astronomers many of whom also know how to design and build equipment.

Optical astronomy was always significant in South Africa, but never radio astronomy.

[gary]

The SKA Members Statement of the General Meeting of 25 May 2012 appears here -
http://www.skatelescope.org/news/ska-members-statement-general-meeting-25-2012/



The original proposed SKA1 and SKA2 configurations are shown graphically
in this 2011 report on pages 8, 9 and 10 here -
http://www.skatelescope.org/public/2011-02_System_delta_CoDR_Documents/Presentations/S3P1-Dewdney_SKA1_highlevel_description_ v2.pdf

[gary]

Some definitions:
SKA1 Low frequency range : 70 - 450 MHz
SKA1 Mid frequency range capability : 0.3 - 10 GHz (initial implementation 0.45 - 3 GHz)

It is proposed that Australia and New Zealand site the low frequency antennas.

The SKA Working Group in 2007 (http://www.skatelescope.org/uploaded/62422_125_Memo_Garrett.pdf) identified two "major science goals which drive the technical specifications of SKA1" -



Neutral hydrogen (HI) is detected at what is known as the hydrogen line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_line) which is at 1.42GHz (21cm).

However, it becomes red-shifted to lower frequencies for distant galaxies.

According to the abstract of this 2009 Nature paper by Chang et. al (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7305/full/nature09187.html) -


This presentation by Martin Zwaan of ESO is entitled "All you would like to do with the SKA on neutral hydrogen" -
http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/div/meetings/SKA_LOFAR/2011_AG_Heidelberg_VRS_Zwaan.pdf

It has slides which propose HI surveys at mid-frequency ranges at z<2 and also
HI surveys requiring a year of integration at z=3 (deep) using low frequencies (350MHz).

So the Australian and New Zealand low-frequency SKA antennas will play a vitally
important role in discoveries at the very distant, highly re-shifted (high z) extents of the
universe.

Congratulations to all those who worked so hard on the Australian and New Zealand bid.
Their forward thinking is going to enable us to look back close to the beginning of time.