Latest news with #SKAO
Forbes
12 hours ago
- Science
- Forbes
SKA Radio Array To Spot Habitable Exoearths Via Their Magnetic Auroras
Two people admiring the green light of Aurora Borealis standing on the wild Skagsanden beach, ... More Lofoten Islands, Norway Radio astronomy has long been unsung and underappreciated, largely because it's never been able to cough up the kind of jaw-dropping visual images that are routine with large optical telescopes. But that could all change when the 1-billion-euro Square Kilometre Array Observatory comes online in Western Australia and South Africa in 2027. The SKAO was primarily funded to unravel the mysteries of dark energy, the evolution of galaxies through cosmic time and to further constrain Einstein's theory of relativity. But at least one Netherlands-based radio astronomer is using that country's know-how in the low-frequency radio spectrum to look for emissions from far flung earthlike extrasolar planets. We really need all the sensitivity SKA-Low can get us as this will be a very faint signal of around a 100 MHz, Joe Callingham, Head of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Science Group at ASTRON, The Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, tells me in his office at the University of Amsterdam. That's basically the same frequency as the FM dial on your car radio. If you ever go hunting for auroras in Norway or Antarctica, you want the Sun to be pumping out radiation, preferably a coronal mass ejection that hits our atmosphere and causes those big, beautiful lights, Callingham tells me. But if you could turn your eyes into radio receivers, they'd also be incredibly bright in the low frequency spectrum, he says. Like a shield, Earth's geomagnetic field protects us from solar activity, so we really think having a geomagnetic field is super important for habitability, says Callingham. And without a geomagnetic field, even if astronomers find an earthlike planet in the habitable zone of a nearby red dwarf star, these M-type red dwarfs pump coronal mass ejections daily. So, most likely, you've got a barren rock sitting in a Goldilocks habitable zone, says Callingham. Because without a magnetic field a planet will lose its atmosphere, and its oceans will be boiled away, he says. So, we really think the magnetic field is vital piece of this puzzle, and radio is the only real way to detect and measure that, says Callingham. Remote Desert Location From a remote site in Western Australia, SKA-Low's antennas are divided into 512 stations, with 256 antennas per station, notes SKAO. From a central compact core measuring 1km across, with a maximum distance of 74 km between the two furthest stations, they note. How does it work? SKA-Low is a "mathematical" telescope that works by filtering out what is not desired from the observable sky, says the SKAO. Its antennas see the whole sky, and through data processing astronomers can "point" in different directions even though the antennas have no moving parts, SKAO notes. As for what the SKAO will bring to the data processing table? The big thing that's changed is professionalization of the software; we've hired software engineers to really help us because it's very computationally expensive radio astronomy, says Callingham. But Callingham and colleagues already have lots of experience in the low frequency regime since The Netherlands has built and has been operating their LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) since 2010. A Great Legacy Radio astronomy in The Netherlands has a very long tradition dating back to World War II and we've capitalized on that expertise, says Callingham. Without the algorithms we've developed here and the engineering skills we've built over time in The Netherlands, the SKA wouldn't be possible, he says. A Planet Hunter This radio method will also be a new way to discover exoplanets, says Callingham. M-type red dwarfs are the best spectral type to survey for these auroras since they host largest number of nearby planets (and have strong magnetic fields), he says. The Bottom Line? The SKA is going to revolutionize our understanding of the universe, largely because it's going to have a sensitivity and the resolution that's unparalleled by any other radio telescope that has ever been built, says Callingham. And I think it will find the first auroras on other planets outside of our solar system, he says.
Daily Maverick
21-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Maverick
Cosmic Echoes Exhibition: bridging Indigenous wisdom and modern science in a unique artistic collaboration
Australian and South African Indigenous artists explore creativity at the intersection of modern science and ancient wisdom. Cosmic Echoes is up at Wits Origins Centre from Friday 23 May until Saturday 5 July. Cosmic Echoes stems from a vision by the SKAO and its partners to bring together Indigenous artists living and working close to the SKA telescope sites. This vision embodies the spirit of international science and engineering collaboration that is the SKAO itself, bringing together many nations around two unique and culturally rich sites in Australia and South Africa to study the same sky. The Exhibition is a transformative journey of collaboration between world-renowned artists, local youth, and Elders who have been inspired by the traditional knowledge of ancient cultures and the wonders of modern science. A celebration of humanity's ancient cultural wisdom. The exhibition will be on at the Wits Origins Centre until Saturday July 5 th. It reflects the richness of the Indigenous understanding of the world; an understanding developed by observing the movements of the night sky since ancient times. Cosmic Echoes explores how this traditional knowledge resonates in the creativity of living artists who are sharing their insights with scientists working to unlock the secrets of the Universe. About a decade ago, the first SKAO Indigenous art exhibition called Shared Sky was developed by the John Curtin Gallery at Curtin University, in association with SARAO, SKA Australia, and in collaboration with Yamaji Art, Geraldton, Australia and the First People Centre at the Bethesda Art Centre, South Africa. Cosmic Echoes is the successor of this venture, highlighting once more the creativity of the people of the remote regions where the SKAO's telescopes are being built. In June 2024, a group of artists worked with local Indigenous youth and Elders in South Africa to prepare for the Cosmic Echoes exhibition. The workshops in Carnarvon, in the Northern Cape region where the SKA-Mid telescope is being built, produced visual art as well as performance art under the guidance of a team of facilitators led by the Cosmic Echoes Curator Sylvia Vollenhoven. Meanwhile in Western Australia, the SKAO and CSIRO commissioned and briefed a group of Aboriginal visual artists from the Wajarri Yamaji People, Traditional Owners and Native Title Holders of the land where the SKA-Low telescope is located. In addition to featuring mainly established artists, the Cosmic Echoes Exhibition curates the youth work in a creative conversation with their professional counterparts. And in turn the artists from Australia and South Africa are 'in conversation' with each other and with the SKAO scientists. Together they achieve an elegant symmetry, echoes of a distant past that speak to a common future. The Exhibition opened in Cape Town August last year at the UN General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It has since been to Artscape in Cape Town and Carnarvon, the hometown of most of the youth artists featured. The Cosmic Echoes: Shared Sky Indigenous Art Exhibition is an SKAO initiative, in collaboration with SARAO, CSIRO and the Wajarri Yamaji Aboriginal Corporation. The SKAO recognises and acknowledges the Indigenous peoples and cultures that have traditionally lived on the lands on which their facilitsies are located. In Australia, the SKAO and CSIRO acknowledge the Wajarri Yamaji as Traditional Owners and Native Title Holders of Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radioastronomy Observatory, the site where the SKA-Low telescope is being built. DM [email protected] and +27 11 717 4707.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
S.Africa's vast radio telescope draws new generation to the cosmos
When Lungelo Zondi first learnt about stars and galaxies at primary school in South Africa, she dreamt of having a live feed into the universe for uninterrupted space exploration. Today, aged 25, her childhood vision has pretty much come true. From her desk in Cape Town, Zondi monitors one of the world's largest radio telescopes, the MeerKAT, made up of 64 giant white dishes that stand in a semi-desert region 600 kilometres (370 miles) away. Through the screen of her computer, she can tune into radio signals emitted by stars and galaxies light-years away using the massive antennae that are 13.5 metres (44 feet) in diametre and turned up to the heavens. "This is so interesting and fascinating: we're collecting data from the universe," Zondi said of the job of telescope operator at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) that she started just two months ago. Since 2005, SARAO has awarded 1,369 bursaries to students of applied mathematics, computer science, astrophysics and other subjects. The bubbly engineering student is among them and part of a young generation of South Africans now able to look into the cosmos since the 2018 inauguration of the MeerKAT super radio telescope, which put the country on the map of global astronomy. - World's most powerful - As impressive as they are, the 64 dishes of the MeerKAT are just the start of an even bigger project, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Observatory that will be the world's most powerful radio telescope when it is completed by 2030. The project will hook up another 133 South African dishes and more than 131,000 antennae based in Western Australia to allow humans to look back billions of years to when the "first stars and galaxies started lighting up the darkness", according to SKAO. In the seven years since it was launched in the remote and sparsely populated Karoo region, MeerKAT has already "pushed the boundaries of scientific knowledge," said Adrian Tiplady, SARAO deputy managing director. Its feats include groundbreaking radio images of the centre of the Milky Way, the discovery of immense radio galaxies stretching across millions of light-years, and the tracking of cosmic ripples through spacetime. And with the MeerKAT programme to help train young South Africans, it is also keeping an eye on its future. "It really covers the broad base of skills needed to actively participate in a global astronomy enterprise," Tiplady said. "It has meant that the youth of South Africa now are excited about science, engineering and technology. We've really grown from a handful of radio astronomers some 10 or 20 years ago to a thriving and diverse community," he said. An astrophysics group at the University of the Western Cape has benefited. In 2011, "it started with just one South African faculty (member) at the time… and one student doing the PhD", Mario Santos, 50, professor in the university's physics and astronomy department, said. "Now we have about 25 students and six faculty members," he added, saying the growth was "completely" linked to MeerKAT's development and South Africa's selection as SKA host. - Time machine - In the control room at SARAO's offices in Cape Town, Zondi and her colleagues monitor the health of the antennae and send them instructions to execute observations requested by scientists from all over the world. There have been more than 1,200 submissions for observation time since 2019, with the biggest share from local research teams, Tiplady said. "The world is watching us, so we have to make things perfect," said Sipho Molefe, another telescope operator. The 34-year-old studied electrical engineering and never imagined he would be working in astronomy. "It makes people dream," he said. "There's a feeling that we're contributing to a bigger and larger environment in terms of information and development of technology." The quiet and empty Karoo from where the MeerKAT's sensitive antennae listen to the universe was identified as holding tremendous potential for South African astronomy in the 1990s. The facility operates in a "radio quiet zone" where radio waves, cell phone signals and wireless connections are strictly controlled to prevent interference with the telescope's tracking. 'When we're building a telescope, it's almost like building a time machine," Tiplady said. "Something like MeerKAT or the SKA will detect radio signals that have been travelling through the universe since the birth of the universe itself.' 'It's a true marvel of scientific and technical excellence... and we're proud of South Africa to be a part of this,' he told AFP. jcb/br/kjm
