William Atkins
Friday, 27 November 2009 20:42
Science -
Space
Page 1 of 2
The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) project has succeeded in contracting for land in Western Australia (WA) following its meetings with the Wajarri Yamatji people. It is an important step in being able to construct the telescope array by 2012.
The ASKAP project is an A$100 million astronomy project to construct an array of thirty-six 12-meter three-axis-of-movement radio dishes for exploration of the Universe.
The array of telescope dishes will provide a wide field of view of the Universe—30 square degrees in all.
The ‘three-axis-of-movement’ dishes for the ASKAP project are unique for telescopes, which are usually built with two axes of movement.
When completed in 2012, the ‘phased-array-feeds’ array will allow observation of the Universe within a frequency range of 700 to 1,700 megahertz (MHz)--where one megahertz is equal to one million hertz.
The phased-array feeds are unique, where most telescopes are built with single pixel feeds.
The array of radio telescopes will be built in the Midwest region of Western Australia.
Page two talks about more about the agreement made for the ASKAP land.
