SKA-India Transients Science Working Group

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope. When completed, the collecting areas of all the receivers that make up the SKA will add up to one square kilometre. It will be about 50 times more sensitive, and up to 10 000 faster than the best radio telescopes available today. The SKA was originally conceived in 1991. An international working group was set up in 1993. The first Memorandum of Agreement (MoU) was signed in 2000.

The SKA will be built in Australia and South Africa. The SKA will provide continuous frequency coverage from 50 MHz to 14 GHz in the first two phases of its construction. Phase 1 will have around 250,000 elements of Low Frequency Aperture Array in Australia and 254 dishes for SKA-mid array in South Africa. It will provide ~10% of the total collecting area at low and mid frequencies by 2020. Phase 2 will have complete Low Frequency Aperture Array in Australia and would have completed 2500 dishes for SKA-mid array in South Africa by 2024. SKA-low array will cover frequency range of 50 to 350 MHz, whereas SKA-mid will cover 350 MHz to 14 GHz frequency range.

SKA have three precursors (at the telescope candidate sites), and several pathfinders. The precursors include, the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP), MeerKAT and Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). The pathfinders are: APERture Tile In Focus (APERTIF), Arecibo Observatory, Allen Telescope Array (ATA), electronic European VLBI Network (eEVN), Electronic MultiBeam Radio Astronomy ConcEpt (EMBRACE), e-MERLIN, Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA), Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), Long Wavelength Array (LWA), SKA Molonglo Prototype (SKAMP), and the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (u-GMRT). The following have been selected as SKA key-science projects: Extreme tests of general relativity, Galaxies, cosmology, dark matter and dark energy, Epoch of re-ionization, cosmic magnetism and Transient radio phenomena caused by extraterrestrial life.

Some of the important SKA science documents can be found at this page.

The talks of SKA Science Assessment Workshop - Transients can be found here.

For people with wider interests, they can look at the presentations of Advancing Astrophysics with the Square Kilometre Array, 8 - 13 June, 2014, Italy. You can also read the Italian white book. May publications for the "Advancing Astrophysics with the Square Kilometre Array" can be found at astro-ph pages too.

The table for sensitivity of SKA precursors, pathfinders and SKA Phase I and Phase II. The table has been obtained from Italian SKA White Book (Eds: L. Feretti and I. Prandoni). Credits: Italian SKA White Book (Editors: L. Feretti and I. Prandoni)