The Square Kilometre Array

[alberto91]

As some of you probably know, the Square Kilometre Array will become the biggest radio telescope on Earth, with a collecting area of 1 square kilometre.

The construction will start in 2021 and the first light is expected to take place in 2027. It will cover the frequencies from 50 MHz to 15 Ghz.

But what I wanted to share with you guys is a new study about how far the SKA can 'listen'.

A recent study points out that the SKA could detect extraterrestrial airport radars 200 light years away.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayqyb8XCtE0

What do you guys think?

[pipnina]

ALMA can have a 16KM diameter with its movable telescopes. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something or this video has overlooked it?

[AKB]

My understanding was that they were going for a total physical dish area of 1km, split between Australia and South Africa?

Strangely, we had an excellent talk on its precursor MeerKAT, at the local Abingdon astronomical society this very week.

[Ouroboros]

9 hours ago, alberto91 said:

A recent study points out that the SKA could detect extraterrestrial airport radars 200 light years away.

Just shows how modest are our capabilities of detecting alien civilisations even with this large and expensive project. 

[andrew s]

The saucer now landing at alph centauri  is for...

Regards Andrew 

[robin_astro]

17 hours ago, AKB said:

My understanding was that they were going for a total physical dish area of 1km, split between Australia and South Africa?

Strangely, we had an excellent talk on its precursor MeerKAT, at the local Abingdon astronomical society this very week.

Yep the aim is to have one square km of signal collecting area eventually. Including all the proposed sub arrays, the effective aperture would  be 3000km.

[ 20% of total collecting area will be within 1 km diameter
[ 50% of total collecting area will be within 5 km diameter
[ 75% of total collecting area will be within 150 km diameter
[ Maximum baselines will be at least 3,000 km from array core.

From  https://www.skateles...rochure_web.pdf

though the date of that brochure predates the decision to build arrays in both Africa and Australia.   AFAIK nothing has been built yet though (or even funded?) apart from the headquarters building at Jodrell Bank

Robin

Edited November 17, 2019 by robin_astro