The discovery potential of the SKA has been glimpsed following the opening of a working optical fibre link between CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope in Western Australia, and other radio telescopes across Australia and New Zealand.
The achievement was announced at the 2011 International SKA Forum, which took place last week in Banff, Canada.
This ability to successfully link antennas (dishes) over large distances will be vital for the future $2.5 billion SKA telescope, which will have several thousand antennas, up to 5500 km apart, working together as a single telescope. Linking antennas in such a manner allows astronomers to see distant galaxies in more detail.
For more details visit the CSIRO website.