New Africa/Australia Radio Telescopes

[back4more70]

Saw this in an article just now:

"The SKA-Mid array in Karoo (will) scan the sky for sources of radio waves in the middle frequency range from 350 MHz to 15.4 GHz using 197 dishes, each 50 feet (15 meters) in diameter."

How soon do you think it will be before Midland starts advertising FRS radios capable of reaching Africa? 

[MarkInTampa]

You quoted the Africa part of the system. The Australian portion, SKA-Low, will revolve around 131,072 antenna "trees" in the country's western Wajarri country. As the name implies, the array will focus on low-frequency signals. The Guardian notes it's expected to be eight times more sensitive than existing telescopes, and map the cosmos about 135 times faster.

My dad was head of R&D for the DSN (Deep Space Network). I spent a lot of time as a kid as a willing slave loading, labeling and swapping computer tapes recording VLBI experiments at the Goldstone and Owens Valley radio telescopes. I then helped load them into the mainframe in the basement of Cal Tech. Fun times as a kid. I moved out of state when I was 18 and every 5 years or so when visiting the old man over the next 20 years I would still go with him to work for a day at Goldstone to satisfy the nerd in me. I was amazing to see the development of the DSN for the 32 years he spent at NASA/JPL.