AstroSignals

DATA & SCIENCE FOR THE NEW GENERATION OF VERY LARGE RADIO-ASTRONOMY FACILITIES

Background image credit: SKA Team

News

2/12/2021
Kick-off meeting at FHNW Windisch.

3-4/2/2021
Statemets by Swiss scientists on the occasion of the newly constituted Square Kilometer Array Organization #SKAO
 

The AstroSignals project

A Swiss initiative preparing for upcoming research opportunities in the field of radio-astronomy. The project team participates in, and contributes to, the new research infrastructures by working on: 

The activities are carried out with regard to several new radio-astronomy facilities currently in development. The most ambitious one is the Square Kilometre Array. The SKA is an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope. It is not a single telescope, but a collection of telescopes, called an array, to be spread over long distances. It will be constructed in Australia and South Africa with a later expansion in both countries and into other African countries. New generation radio-telescopes rely on complex infrastructures:

We expect huge amounts of data to come from the SKA and its precursor radio telescopes MeerKat, ASKAP and HIRAX (Switzerland is already involved in HIRAX). Once the radio signals have been received and processed, data will be sent to one of the dedicated data centers around the globe to be stored and made available for scientific investigation. This enormous undertaking generates many computational challenges in terms of signal processing, data science and high performance computing techniques.

AstroSignals’ research activities are a well invested effort to put scientists in Switzerland and beyond in a position to access, and contribute to, the most encompassing radio-astronomy facilities of the future once data arrive. Being prepared and ready to operate at the cutting edge of science and technology is key.