Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO)

#GS-03 Science and Technology

Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO):

SKAO is a new intergovernmental organisation dedicated to radio astronomy and is headquartered in the UK.
At the moment, organisations from ten countries are a part of the SKAO.
These include Australia, Canada, China, India, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK.
India is represented by Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR)- National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA).
SKAO is proposed to be world’s largest radio telescope.
It is being built in Australia and South Africa since the view of the Milky Way Galaxy is the best and radio interference at its least there.
It was started in 1990s, and further developed and designed by late-2010s. after completion, it will have a total collecting area of approximately one square kilometre.
It will require very high-performance central computing engines as well as long-haul links.

A radio telescope is a specialized antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky.
Unlike optical telescopes, radio telescopes can be used in the daytime as well as at night.
Radio telescopes are typically large parabolic (“dish”) antennas similar to those employed in tracking and communicating with satellites and space probes.
They may be used singly or linked together electronically in an array.
Radio waves from space were first detected by engineer Karl Guthe Jansky in 1932 at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey.
The first purpose-built radio telescope was a 9-meter parabolic dish constructed by radio amateur Grote Reber in his back yard in Wheaton, Illinois in 1937.