SETI Talks - Radio Astronomy: The End of Big Dishes?

SETI Talks

Time: Thursday, Oct 22, 2020 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Location: Online - Youtube

Important note: This special presentation of SETI Talks will be held at a different time than usual (10:00AM PDT)

Big-single dish radio astronomy observatories such as the 305-m Arecibo Observatory and the 500-m FAST (Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope) have made key breakthroughs in science, including the discovery of the first extrasolar planets. Recently, interferometric telescopes such as MeerKAT in South Africa, ASKAP (Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder), and CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) have opened up new observing windows. These experiments are all precursor to the SKA (Square Kilometer Array), whose construction will begin in 2021 and is expected to be the most sensitive radio telescope ever built.

Why this explosion of radio telescope projects?
What’s the scientific reasoning for building arrays separated across continents?
What challenges do astronomers and engineers face?
Finally, what kind of science are these arrays useful for and will SETI benefit from their capabilities?

To answer these questions, we invited two astronomers who have worked for years in the field of radio astronomy. Cherry Ng is a researcher at the Dunlap Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics in Canada. She has used the single-dish Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia and the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) radio telescope for her research on neutron star and fast radio bursts. Evan Keane, an award-winning astrophysicist, works in time-domain radio astronomy and has been the Square Kilometer Array project scientist since 2015.

Cherry Ng and Evan Keane will describe their past, current and future work with radio telescopes, the potential of future facilities for their research and the SETI search.

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Cherry Ng is a post-doctoral researcher at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics. During her PhD study, she has discovered 60 rapidly spinning neutron stars with the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia. Her hunting effort continues, now with the Canadian CHIME telescope. Together with the team, she uses CHIME to detect and study “fast radio bursts,” a new astrophysical mystery that involves short bursts of radio waves that have come from far outside our Milky Way galaxy.

Evan Keane is an award-winning astrophysicist working in the area of time-domain radio astronomy. Time variable astrophysical signals arise from extreme physical environments, impossible to create in an Earth-bound laboratory, and so offer unique insights into laws of nature. His work involves searching for pulsars and fast radio bursts and using these as tools to understand the Universe. Recently he has begun working on SETI search systems. Since 2015 he has been Project Scientist for the Square Kilometre Array, which commences construction in 2021. Evan's role has been to ensure that the telescope designs can deliver scientifically in time-domain science.