New electronics designed to power the antennas of the world’s largest radio telescope are so quiet that they cause less disturbance than a mobile phone on the moon.
New electronic devices, or smart boxes, have been developed for Square kilometer matrix (SKA) Low Frequency Telescope, a network of radio dishes currently under construction in Western Australia.
The SKA Low Telescope, along with its medium-frequency counterpart, which is being built in South Africa, will be the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the world once it is operational later this decade.
SKA Low’s 131,072 dipole antennas will be able to detect the weakest radio signals coming from the farthest distance from Earth being. But this remarkable sensitivity means that the array, located in a remote, barely populated area, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Perth, will be very vulnerable to interference from man-made radio wave sources.
Related: How does astronomy use the electromagnetic spectrum?
For example, Recent study I found that the telescope’s antennas are so sensitive that they pick up even the soft hum emanating from the telescope’s on-board electronics SpaceX‘s Starlink Satellites that broadcast the Internet, orbiting 342 miles (550 kilometers) above Land. Man-made sources of radio waves can interfere with observations and confuse astronomical research. Square Kilometer Observatory (SKAO) radio spectrum manager Federico Di Frono told Space.com in Previous interview This interference could, for example, impair the telescope’s search for signs of extraterrestrial life.
To minimize disturbances, a radio quiet zone surrounds the telescope, where the use of cell phones and radio transmitters is strictly controlled. To ensure that the telescope’s electronics were not contributing to the problem, engineers at the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) at Curtin University in Perth developed special power and signal distribution devices that emit almost no electromagnetic radiation.
“The observatory site is so quiet that the largest potential source of interference is electronics like ours, due to their proximity to the antennas,” Tom Boller, ICRAR’s engineering and operations program leader, said in an emailed statement. “This meant that our project had to meet the most stringent radio emission requirements across the entire Australian SKA site.”
In addition to being made of radio-quiet components, the devices are encased in a special casing that prevents any electromagnetic radiation from escaping into the environment. When tested, the devices emitted less radiation than would reach the antennas of a mobile phone placed on the surface of the device moonBoller added.
Building a giant radio telescope It began in December 2022 after more than 30 years of preparations. The two telescope sites in Australia and South Africa will have a combined collecting area of one kilometer, as the name suggests, or 0.34 square miles. The site, located in Western Australia, will listen to radio waves at lower frequencies, between 50 and 350 megahertz. The South African array, which will consist of 197 antennas 50 feet (15 meters) wide, will focus on longer wavelengths, between 350 MHz and 15.4 GHz.
Radio waves have much longer wavelengths than visible light, which enables them to penetrate dust and debris. Sensitive radio telescopes like SKAO allow astronomers to detect radio waves emanating from parts of the universe that are obscured and invisible to other types of telescopes.
“SKAO telescopes will truly revolutionize our understanding of the universe,” Katherine Czarski, president of the SKAO board, said in a statement last year. “They will allow us to study its evolution and some of its most mysterious phenomena in unprecedented detail, and that is really exciting for the scientific community.”