Artist's impression of some dishes of the Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope to be built in Western Australia. Image credit: Chris Fluke,Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology.

The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) is a new radio telescope that will provide an important test-bed for SKA technology as well as being a world-leading telescope in its own right. 

The telescope will be designed and built by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in collaboration with leading overseas astronomers and engineers.

The Australian Government has committed funding of A$100.9 million to the Australian SKA Pathfinder.

The main Pathfinder array will be in the same location in Western Australia as the proposed core site for the SKA. It will consist of up to 45 dishes, working together as a single telescope. The dishes will use innovative radio-wave receivers that will give them an unparalleled view of the sky.

The Western Australian site will be linked to a smaller group of dishes in NSW by optical fibre.

The Pathfinder telescope will be able to detect hundreds of times more galaxies than previous radio telescopes, helping us to understand how galaxies have formed and evolved.

It will help us to understand how our own Galaxy has developed, and its current structure.

It will also be a world leader in studies of pulsars, transient radio sources, and magnetic fields in space, helping to cast light on fundamental physics and processes at work in the universe today.

Early Pathfinder experiments are expected to start in 2007-08 and construction of the Pathfinder telescope will occur in 2008-2011.

Further information about the Pathfinder telescope and associated scientific activities is at http://www.atnf.csiro.au/projects/askap/