Mahatma Gandhi University has joined the 15-member India consortium for setting up the world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
The partnering institutions signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Monday, marking the formal launch of the SKA India consortium at the TIFR-National Centre of Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) in Pune.
Prof. K. Indulekha of the School of Pure and Applied Physics, Mahatma Gandhi University; Dr. Ninan Sajeeth Philip of the Department of Physics at St. Thomas College, Kozhencherry; and Dr. Joe Jacob of the Department of Physics, Newman College, Thodupuzha; will be part of the Indian contributors to the SKA project. Dr. Philip (representing astronomers in universities and colleges) was one of the signatories to the MoU.
“Indian scientists are participating in three of the 10 design work packages for SKA-I. The Telescope Manager, which will be the brain and nervous system controlling the entire SKA Observatory, is being designed by a team led by NCRA in collaboration with other research organisations and industry partners in India, as well as collaborators from six other SKA member nations,” Prof. Jacob told The Hindu over the telephone from Pune.
Termed as the world’s most sensitive radio telescope, SKA is an international effort to build a radio telescope with a square kilometre (one million square metres) of collecting area.
As per the NCRA, it is 30 times the area of India’s own Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT). The SKA is currently in the detailed design stage. The first phase of the SKA is scheduled to start by early 2018. Australia and South Africa will share the location of the SKA.
Besides Mahatma Gandhi university, some of the other partner institutions in the SKA India consortium include TIFR-NCRA; Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune; Raman Research Institute (RRI), Bangalore; Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur; Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata; Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER), Mohali; Jamia Millia Islamiya, New Delhi; and Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad.
