Hamish Reid (Glasgow) attended the meeting to discuss SKA Science and has provided the following report.
Brief SKA facts
The SKA will have 1,000,000 times faster imaging and 100
times the sensitivity than existing radio telescopes, with greater than 5 square km collecting area. The frequency range for the
SKA will hopefully be 40-650 MHZ for SKA1-LOW and 350-13800 MHz for
SKA1-MID. Data rates are so high that the SKA is planned to only
deliver images and NOT the raw visibilities for observing time.
UK involvement
The organisation of the SKA is fully established, design funding is
secure and the schedule has been agreed. Design consortia are up
and running and UK community engagement is under way with the UK
being a major partner. Moreover, the UK is bidding to have the central
SKA project building based in Manchester which, if successful, would be
very advantageous for the UK. Currently it is thought that the UK bid
is the only existing bid although the deadline has not closed. The UK
is currently involved in testing some low frequency antennas in Australia.
SKA Status and re-baselining
There has been a cost cap enforced on the SKA of 650 million Euros for
the first stage, SKA1. The UK involvement for this stage is fixed at
£100 million. The cost cap is causing a re-baselining of the design, scaling back some of the features of the SKA. For the re-baselining there are about 35 current working scenarios still under consideration. A science review
panel is meeting in December to discuss the options. The results of
this process should be a clear recommendation to the board in March
2015. The science review panel consists of 1 representative from each
of the 8 working groups and 1 representative from each of
the SKA countries. Sadly Solar Physics does not (yet) have a working group.
From all of the goals that each of the working groups have produced
there are currently 13 goals that have been chosen as the drivers for
the re-baselineing of the SKA. These goals represent about 50% of the
total observing time of SKA1. Some of these goals will drop off with
the SKA changes its baseline. There are 31 other science goals.
It has not been decided whether or SKA will have key science
projects (KSPs) like other radio telescopes, for example LOFAR. This
will be decided within the next 6 months along with any guaranteed
observing time and the size/number of the KSPs.
Involvement
If you would like to pass on your opinions about what is important
before the science review panel meet in December then you are encouraged
to contact the SKA representative at your institution or any member of
the UKSKASC. The chair of the UKSKASC is Philip Best at the RoE.
UKSP Council encourages solar involvement with SKA. Preliminary discussions have been held between interested parties and the SKA Science Team. If you would like to know more or get involved, please email p.browning@mancheter.ac.uk