In a statement, the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) says the new observatory, known as SKAO, is the world’s second intergovernmental organisation to be dedicated to astronomy.
Headquartered in the UK on the grounds of the Jodrell Bank UNESCO World Heritage Site, with sites in Australia and South Africa, SKAO is tasked with building and operating the two largest and most complex radio telescope networks ever conceived to address fundamental questions about our universe, says SARAO.
Radio telescopes, unlike optical telescopes, can detect invisible gas and can reveal areas of space that may be obscured by cosmic dust.
The SKAO telescope will be an array of antennas located in two continents, i.e. Africa and Australia.The operation, maintenance and construction of the telescope will be overseen by SKAO. The development of the telescope is expected to take nearly a decade at a cost of over £1.8 billion.
SKAO is a new intergovernmental organisation dedicated to radio astronomy. The headquartered of SKAO is based in the United Kingdom. Currently organisations from ten countries are a part of the SKAO, which include Australia, Canada, China, India, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK. French-born Dr Catherine Cesarsky has been appointed as the first Chair of the SKAO Council. The Indian contingent of over 20 institutions will be lead by Pune-based National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) of TIFR.
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