The SKA Observatory (SKAO) has reached a significant milestone in South Africa: two of its SKA-Mid radio telescope dishes have successfully operated as an interferometer for the first time.<\/p>\n
This marks a key step toward full scientific operations.<\/p>\n
The SKAO is currently under construction across two sites in South Africa and Western Australia.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the largest radio astronomy facility ever built, designed to study the Universe by collecting faint radio signals with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution.<\/p>\n
An interferometer combines signals from multiple dishes, antennas or telescopes to function as a single, much larger instrument.<\/p>\n
The term \u2019fringes\u2019 refers to the successful combination of signals from two or more antennas or dishes, a critical test of system performance.<\/p>\n
For this new achievement, two 15-metre SKA-Mid dishes observed a distant radio galaxy approximately 2.6 billion light-years away, demonstrating the telescope\u2019s ability to work in concert.<\/p>\n
Professor Philip Diamond, SKAO Director-General, said:<\/p>\n
This is the first true test that all our systems are working together, and that the SKA-Mid telescope is alive as a scientific instrument.<\/p>\n
Having each dish observe the sky individually is an achievement, but having them operate in concert as one telescope is a much bigger technical challenge, and our teams have now achieved that milestone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This result confirms that the SKAO hardware and software systems are working as expected.<\/p>\n
Building towards 197 dishes<\/h2>\n
SKA-Mid now has seven dish structures assembled on site in the Northern Cape, with a further 12 on their way from the manufacturers CETC54 in China.<\/p>\n
When complete the telescope will comprise 197 dishes, including the integration of the existing MeerKAT radio telescope built and operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO).<\/p>\n
UK role<\/h2>\n
Alongside hosting the global headquarters at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, UK teams are playing a pivotal role in delivering key technologies for the SKA Mid telescope in South Africa.<\/p>\n
Much of the UK research and development is being funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).<\/p>\n
UK contributions include:<\/p>\n
\n
- observation and science operations software from the UK Astronomy Technology Centre<\/li>\n
- data handling and processing solutions from STFC\u2019s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the University of Cambridge to manage the telescope\u2019s vast data output<\/li>\n
- pulsar search systems from the universities of Oxford and Manchester, enabling studies of neutron stars and gravitational waves<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
In addition, UK companies have won contracts to contribute to SKAO construction, including:<\/p>\n
\n
- cryocoolers and ruggedised compressors from Oxford Cryosystems Ltd<\/li>\n
- synchronisation and timing Timescale from GMV UK Ltd<\/li>\n
- telescope control systems from Observatory Sciences Ltd<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
An important milestone<\/h2>\n
Dr Laura Wolz, UK representative to the SKA Science and Engineering Advisory Committee and Reader at The University of Manchester, said:<\/p>\n
The first fringes at SKA-Mid is such an important milestone towards the operation of all SKA telescopes.<\/p>\n
Now the astronomy community is getting excited for first scientific data from the telescopes.<\/p>\n
This really represents the culmination of decades of design and construction work and is a great achievement for the global collaboration supporting the project.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":181485,"template":"","categories":[561,56],"tags":[],"wf_news_folders":[],"class_list":["post-181481","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-st3-opportunities-and-outcomes","category-stfc"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukri.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/181481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukri.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukri.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukri.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/181481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181511,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukri.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/181481\/revisions\/181511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukri.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukri.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukri.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukri.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181481"},{"taxonomy":"wf_news_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukri.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_news_folders?post=181481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}