Public Lecture: ASKAP - the Australian SKA Pathfinder and the bid to host the SKA

Professor Phil Diamond 

CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science (CASS)

Credit: Courtesy of the Department of Commerce, Western Australia

The Australian Square Kilometre Pathfinder is a $150 million radio telescope being constructed in Western Australia by the CSIRO. Designed to test new technologies for the SKA and survey the sky in unprecedented detail ASKAP will be a world-class radio telescope in its own right. When complete ASKAP will feature an array of 36 dish antennas, each 12 metres in diameter and be the most powerful survey radio astronomy instrument in existence.

Join us for a special talk for National Science Week as we welcome the Chief of CSIRO’s Astronomy and Space Science Division, Professor Phil Diamond to tell us all about these amazing telescopes and what the future holds as we approach the decision of who will host one of the biggest science projects of this century.

Professor Philip Diamond: Biography

In 2010 Professor Philip Diamond moved to Australia and took on the role of Chief of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science (CASS), a division responsible for operating the major radio astronomy facilities throughout Australia. This suite of facilities includes Parkes, the Compact Array, Mopra and the NASA Deep Space Network tracking station at Tidbinbilla. As well as the operation of existing sites CSIRO is also building ASKAP, the Australian SKA Pathfinder, in the Murchison in Western Australia and Diamond is heavily involved in the international project to build the Square Kilometre Array - a continent-scale radio telescope 50 times more powerful than any existing radio telescope in the world today.

Professor Diamond completed his PhD at the University of Manchester in 1982. He then worked at the Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden and the Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, Germany before moving to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in the USA. He held the position of Deputy Director of the NRAO’s VLA and VLBA before moving back to the UK in 1999 where he was appointed Director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics.

Professor Diamond’s research interests include studies of star birth and death and high resolution studies of supernovae, both in our own Galaxy and in others. Finally, he dabbles in studies of discs of molecular gas rotating around super-massive black-holes at the centres of other galaxies. He has published over 200 research papers in astronomy.

This lecture is co-sponsored with the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and the Institute of Advanced Studies at UWA. For more details and enquiries see the event at the Institute of Advanced Studies Website.