Square Kilometre Array
Sign in to saveAlso known as SKA, Square Kilometer Array
large multi radio telescope project aimed to be built in Australia and South Africa
OverviewAI-generated
The Square Kilometre Array, also known as the SKA Telescope, is an organization established in 2011. It is currently active and located in Johannesburg, South Africa. The entity is categorized under the type "other" within the Research Organization Registry.
The project is scheduled to enter service in 2027. Its official website is titled "Explore | SKAO" and can be accessed via the source property P856. The organization is associated with the Wikidata identifier for the Square Kilometre Array and holds the International Standard Name Identifier 0000 0004 0569 9009.
Synthesized by Vinony from 16 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, Firecrawl, ROR. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Key facts
- Alternative names
- SKA
- Location s
- Meerkat National Park , South Africa and Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory , Australia
- Coordinates
- 30°43′16″S 21°24′40″E / 30.72111°S 21.41111°E / -30.72111; 21.41111 and 26°41′49″S 116°37′52″E / 26.69694°S 116.63111°E / -26.69694; 116.63111
- Built
- 2018–
- First light
- 2027 (projected)
- Collecting area
- 1 km (11,000,000 sq ft)
- Website
- www .skao .int
via Wikipedia infobox
Research organization · ROR
- Type
- Other
- Founded
- 2011
- Location
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Also known as
- SKA
- Status
- Active
GRID grid.452213.3 · ISNI 0000 0004 0569 9009
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- phased array
- Named after
- antenna array
- Country
- Australia
- Located in
- Western Australia
- Area
- 1
- Official website
- www.skao.int
- Image
- SKA overview.jpg
- Significant event
- first light
Show 6 more facts
- service entry
- 2027-00-00
- Commons category
- Square Kilometre Array
- topic's main category
- Category:Square Kilometre Array
- native label
- Square Kilometre Array
- inception
- 2011-00-00
- social media followers
- 28251
via Wikidata · CC0
~28 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an intergovernmental international radio telescope project being built in Australia (low-frequency) and South Africa (mid-frequency). The combining infrastructure, the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO), and headquarters, are located at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in the United Kingdom. The SKA cores are being built in the Southern Hemisphere, where the view of the Milky Way galaxy is the best and radio interference is at its least.
The name refers to the notional size of the telescope's collecting area, not to the extent of the entire telescope array, which is far larger. Conceived in the 1990s, and further developed and designed by the late-2010s, the intention is that when completed it will have a total collecting area of approximately one square kilometre as originally conceived. The design of the first phase of SKA, scheduled as of 2025 for science operation in 2032, consists of 21,000 square metres (0.021 km) of collecting area of dishes. It will operate over a wide range of frequencies and its size will make it 50 times more sensitive than any other radio instrument. If built as planned, it should be able to survey the sky more than ten thousand times faster than before. With receiving stations extending out to a distance of at least 3,000 km (1,900 mi) from a concentrated central core, it will exploit radio astronomy's ability to provide the highest-resolution images in all astronomy.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Square Kilometre Array” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
On the map
2 mapped locations